Home > Author > Rabih Alameddine
81 " Belief is the enemy of a storyteller "
― Rabih Alameddine , The Hakawati
82 " Noah, however, was a son of a bitch of a captain who ran a very tight ship. Only pairs of the best and the brightest were allowed to climb the plank—perpetuate the species, repopulate the planet, and all that Nazi nonsense. Would Noah have allowed a lesbian zebra aboard, an unmarried hedgehog, a limping lemur? "
― Rabih Alameddine , An Unnecessary Woman
83 " She can be ornery now and then, vain for sure, petulant and impetuous, silly at times, ill disposed toward the help, even malicious and malevolent when angry, but, still, she has always been the one for me. "
84 " A hakawati is a teller of tales, myths, and fables. A storyteller, and entertainer. A troubadour of sorts, someone who earns his keep by beguiling an audience with yarns. Like the word “hekayah” story, fable, news, hakawati is derived from the Lebanese word “haki”, which means talk or conversation. This suggests that in Lebanese the mere act of talking is storytelling. "
85 " Almost everything that men have said best has been said in Greek. "
86 " Most of the books published these days consist of a series of whines followed by an epiphany. "
87 " I love the idea of homeland, but not the actual return to one. "
88 " At the heart of most antagonisms are irreconcilable similarities. Hundred-year wars were fought over whether Jesus was human in divine form or divine in human form. Belief is murderous. "
89 " Among the many definitions of progress, “enemy of trees” and “killer of birds” seem to me the most apt. "
90 " Hope, the great deceiver, seduced her that morning. "
91 " Later, much later, as an adult woman, she wrote of her need to be loved, to be desired, as a ravenous monster with an exigent appetite living in a black hole within. Whatever love was thrown her way, the monster devoured it and left her with nothing. "
92 " I am a functioning human being. Mostly. Just so you don’t make too much fun of me, the mostly above refers to functioning, not to human being. "
93 " Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas. "
94 " Cioran once said that “one touch of clearsightedness reduces us to our primary state: nakedness. "
95 " I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals. One "
96 " I can see myself sitting all day in my chair, immersed in lives, plots, and sentences, intoxicated by words and chimeras, paralyzed by satisfaction and contentment, reading until the deepening twilight, until I can no longer make out the words, until my mind begins to wander, until my aching muscles are no longer able to keep the book aloft. Joy is the anticipation of joy. Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan. "
― Rabih Alameddine
97 " Joy is the anticipation of joy. Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan. "
98 " How does the old cliché go? When every Arab girl stood in line waiting for God to hand out the desperate-to-get-married gene, I must have been somewhere else, probably lost in a book. "
99 " The cure for loneliness is solitude. —Marianne Moore, from the essay “If I Were Sixteen Today "
100 " Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. "