Amin Maalouf

“Yes indeed, both Muslim and Jewish!I, her father, am Muslim, at least on paper; her mother is Jewish, at least in theory.…

— Amin Maalouf

The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the…

— Amin Maalouf

Let your tears roll tonight, but tomorrow you will start the battle again. What defeats us, always, is just our own sorrow.

— Amin Maalouf

“Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be…

— Amin Maalouf

“A community begins to fall apart the moment it agrees to abandon the weakest of its members.”

— Amin Maalouf

Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the…

— Amin Maalouf

life is not so long that one can grow tired of it

— Amin Maalouf

“Til gjengjeld er det store sjanser for at ethvert amerikansk valg heretter vil bli et verdensomspennende psykordrama.”

— Amin Maalouf

“Someone other than I might have used the word “roots”. It is not part of my vocabulary. I don’t like the word,…

— Amin Maalouf

“On les écouta, on compatit, on s'indigna, on promit, mais on ne bougea pas une lance”

— Amin Maalouf

“Clawing its way towards us, the ugliness of the world tore away our hiding-place.”

— Amin Maalouf

What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three…

— Amin Maalouf

“... the pursuit of origins is a way of rescuing territory from death and oblivion, a reconquest that ought to be patient,…

— Amin Maalouf

“Det er ikke den mest troende som får legitimitet, men den som fører en kamp som er identisk med folkets kamp.”

— Amin Maalouf

“What strange times we live in, when good must disguise itself in the tawdry rags of evil!”

— Amin Maalouf

“The past is bound to be fragmentary, bound to be reconstructed, bound to be reinvented. It serves only to collect the truths…

— Amin Maalouf

“Some women's arms are places of exile; others are a native land.”

— Amin Maalouf

“...people always manage to 'prove' what they want to believe; they'd be just as well off if they tried to prove the…

— Amin Maalouf

How do I pray? I study a rose, I count the stars, I marvel at the beauty of creation and how perfectly…

— Amin Maalouf

Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least…

— Amin Maalouf

The identity cannot be compartmentalized; it cannot be split in halves or thirds, nor have any clearly defined set of boundaries. I…

— Amin Maalouf

It's the relationship I have with the world: always trying to escape from reality. I'm a daydreamer; I don't feel in harmony…

— Amin Maalouf

“So I've become an exile without ever leaving my country.”

— Amin Maalouf

Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person…

— Amin Maalouf

You can't say history teaches us this or that; it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question.

— Amin Maalouf