Rabih Alameddine

“Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden.She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who…

— Rabih Alameddine

“I thought every person should live for art, not just me, and furthermore, why would I want to be normal? Why would…

— Rabih Alameddine

“Belief is the enemy of a storyteller”

— Rabih Alameddine

“You looked inhuman when you were dying, Doc, your eyes glistened like dimming stars, you were wasting away and life was leaving…

— Rabih Alameddine

“On Lou's lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer…

— Rabih Alameddine

“I believe that the choice of a first book, the book that opens your eyes and quickens your soul, is as involuntary…

— Rabih Alameddine

“In every evocation of a childhood scene, my stepfather's face is the least detailed, the most out of focus; when I think…

— Rabih Alameddine

“In order to live, I have to blind myself to my infinitesimal dimensions in this infinite universe.”

— Rabih Alameddine

“Choosing which book isn't difficult. The choice is typically the last one I brought home. I acquire books constantly and place them…

— Rabih Alameddine

“You have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life.”

— Rabih Alameddine

When I published my first work, I thought I would never be able to go back to Lebanon. I thought they'd arrest…

— Rabih Alameddine

“There are a few places on the East Coast, and maybe Los Angeles, where women understand evening gowns. The rest of the…

— Rabih Alameddine

“My patience, like my time in this world, grows shorter.”

— Rabih Alameddine

“No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for…

— Rabih Alameddine

I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.

— Rabih Alameddine

“I slipped into art to escape life. I sneaked off into literature.”

— Rabih Alameddine

“One's first response is that these Beirutis must be savagely insane to murder each other for such trivial divergences. Don't judge us…

— Rabih Alameddine

“I was a lonely boy. I spent all my time reading books and watching the world. [some] tried to draw me out…

— Rabih Alameddine

“I am still more or less sane because of my evening reading.”

— Rabih Alameddine

“We rarely consider that we're also formed by the decisions we didn't make, by events that could have happened but didn't, or…

— Rabih Alameddine

For someone like me and my generation, you had to speak French to be sophisticated, you had to be lighter-skinned.

— Rabih Alameddine

“Cioran once said that “one touch of clearsightedness reduces us to our primary state: nakedness.”

— Rabih Alameddine

“When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade…

— Rabih Alameddine

...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of…

— Rabih Alameddine

“Now, please don't tell me you don't care about how you look and that there's more to you than your appearance. There…

— Rabih Alameddine