Quotes from Rabih Alameddine

Who among the angels will hear me if I cry? I stand in the dank and he dark, amid my wasted life, not knowing what to do, unable to make any decision, and weep. My hopes were extinguished a long while ago, and now any tinder of dignity follows suit.

My soul is fate's chew toy. My destiny pursues me like an experienced tracker., like a malevolent hunter, bites me and won't let go. What I thought I left behind I find again. I'll always be a failure, then, now, and forever.

I've read Waiting for Godot three times and I still can't tell you what it is about. If, as some critics claim, it is about being bored while waiting for God to return, then it's even duller than I thought.

Literatura e groapa mea cu nisip. E locul meu de joaca, in ea imi construiesc fortaretele si castelele, acolo petrec momente glorioase.

Other people are hazy phenomena that become corporeal only in my memories.

Compared to the complexity of understanding grief, reading Foucault or Blanchot is like perusing a children's picture book.

I read books—read, read, one can learn everything from books.

He said you used him as a narrator, an interpreter of stories. I liked that term. I wondered if that was how you interacted with those around you. You wanted people's stories, not them. You cared for the tale, not the teller.

My library has two books," Fadia says, "and I have yet to finish coloring the second one." She brightens, and her laughter grows louder when she realizes I've cracked a smile. "Fadia can be funny sometimes.

I'm not sharpening my knife, nor am I fluffing welcoming pillows. I should mention that I'm not fluffing pillows to kill her with either.

There should be a new literary resolution: no more epiphanies. Enough. Have pity on readers who reach the end of a real-life conflict in confusion and don't experience a false sense of temporary enlightenment.

Malcolm Lowry Late of the Bowery His prose was flowery And often glowery He lived, nightly, and drank, daily, And died playing the ukulele

What breaks us is rarely what we expect.

Why is it that you live in such a safe place yet consider the world so dangerous?" "I'm an American.

the need to belong to a party, any party, is greater than the fear of appearing stupid once again,

Joseph Roth ends Flight Without End with the sentence: "No one in the whole world was as superfluous as he." I beg to differ. No one in the whole world is as superfluous as I. Not Franz Tunda, Roth's protagonist, no. I am the one who has no occupation, no desire, no hope, no ambition, not even any self-love.

My soul is fate's chew toy. My destiny pursues me like an experienced tracker, like a malevolent hunter, bites me and won't let go. What I thought I left behind I find again. I'll always be a failure, then, now, and forever. Fail again. Fail worse. I witness my life's collapse.

Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, tacky, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden. She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.

Unlike the main streets that cut the city with a butcher's cleaver, this ancient one wiggles its hips quite a bit. It negotiates with the neighborhood, it haggles, gives and takes; rarely is it straight, it is intrinsic.

No, I might be able to poke fun at the Quran for its childishly imperious content, but not for its style.

We are condemned to repeat the past whether we remember it or not.

I bet you believe in the redemptive power of art. I'm sure you do. I did. Such a romantic notion. Art will rescue the world, lift humanity above the horrible quagmire it's stuck in. Art will save you.

We are all children when we sleep.

In the grand scheme of stories, he was nothing, almost an unmentionable, for he was not an odd character or an interesting one. He was a thread, one of many, without which the tapestry would crumble, the yarn fray, and the tale unravel.