I need to have one foot inside and one foot outside a culture to be able to write about it. For example, I couldn't write about the gay culture if I were wholly inside or outside of it. Finding that… — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
I think in Arabic at times, but when I'm writing it's all in English. And I don't try to make my English sound more Arabic, because it would be phony - I'm imagining Melanie Griffith trying to do a German… — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
“I like men and women who don't fit well in the dominant culture, or, as Alvar de Campos calls them, strangers in this place as in every other, accidental in life as in the woul. I like outsiders, phantoms wandering the cobwebbed halls of the doomed castle where life must be lived. David Grossman may love Israel, but he wanders… — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share
“I was always alone, Doc, solitary whether I wished to be or not, ever since I could remember I wished to be lost in another, thought that somehow I could disappear into that heart of yours, take walks within your veins, wander through the bones of you. You had friends, Satan said, you loved and were loved, you must not… — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share
“When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma.” — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
“He may be my half brother, but we're not related. A chasm of incommunicable worlds lies between us.” — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
You look at the Koran or the Bible, they all tell the same stories. You see them as the stories of the Middle East. The stories reflect who these people were in the Middle East, and this is where Western culture came from. All our literature is basically influenced by these great myths. So I'm fascinated by it. You could… — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share
“Other people are hazy phenomena that become corporeal only in my memories.” — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
“In reality, the only true model of a successful woman was the Divine Sarah.” — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
“I told her I was not sure I could bear living with memories, she said, Look up at the stars, look, they are not… — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
“In Beirut, death’s unremitting light shines bright for all to see, brighter than the Mediterranean sun, brighter than the night’s Russian missiles, brighter than… — Rabih Alameddine Copy Share Image
