Home > Author > Rabih Alameddine
141 " Satan said, You are a temp in life. "
― Rabih Alameddine , The Angel of History
142 " We are condemned to repeat the past whether we remember it or not. It is inevitable; just ask Nietzsche (eternal return) or Hegel (history repeats itself) or James McCourt (history repeats itself like hiccups). Beirutis "
― Rabih Alameddine , An Unnecessary Woman
143 " Once upon a time there was an island visited by ruin and inhabited by strange peccant creatures. “It’s a sad place,” I say, “and too much like my own life.” He nods. “You mean, the losing struggle against inscrutable blind forces, young dreams brought to ruin.” “Yes,” I tell Coover, “my young dreams are gone. I lost the struggle a long, long time ago. "
― Rabih Alameddine , Koolaids: The Art of War
144 " The platter could probably sate four starving Ethiopians into a crapulous state. "
145 " Translation is so important. The new American translations of the Bible sound like a Judith Krantz novel. "
146 " I thought I’d be reading a new book today, but it doesn’t feel right, or I don’t feel like it. Some days are not new-book days. "
147 " When he played, though—when he played he could liquefy your soul. He walked on water—well, his fingers did—liquid supple and fluid smooth, running, dripping, flowing. "
148 " I am a reader. Yes, I am that, a reader with nagging back pain. "
149 " Israelis are Jews who have misplaced their sense of humor. I like men and women who don’t fit well in the dominant culture, or, as Álvaro de Campos calls them, strangers in this place as in every other, accidental in life as in the soul. 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 its cobwebbed halls, just as his namesake Vasily wandered Russia’s. To write is to know that you are not home. I stopped loving Odysseus as soon as he landed back in Ithaca. I love the idea of homeland, but not the actual return to one. "
150 " Writing one’s story narcotizes it. Literature today is an opiate. "
― Rabih Alameddine , The Wrong End of the Telescope
151 " We invade your countries, destroy your economies, demolish your infrastructures, murder hundreds of thousands of your citizens, and a decade or so later, we write beautifully restrained novels about how killing you made us cry. "
― Rabih Alameddine
152 " You have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life. "
153 " Throughout our marriage, we would go for weeks without exchanging more than perfunctory communications, sharing little but the bewildered quiet. And you think that I am lonely now? Heavens. I wish I’d listened to Chekhov, or had read him then: “If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry. "
154 " My books show me what it’s like to live in a reliable country where you flick on a switch and a bulb is guaranteed to shine and remain on, where you know that cars will stop at red lights and those traffic lights will not cease working a couple of times a day. How does it feel when a plumber shows up at the designated time, when he shows up at all? How does it feel to assume that when someone says she’ll do something by a certain date, she in fact does it? "
155 " She also taught me how to pray, another discipline I didn’t keep up with. In the beginning I was too busy, what with housework, cooking, and educating myself. I had little time for a god who had little time for me. As I matured, I had no use for one. Emmanuel Lévinas suggested that God left in 1941. Mine left in 1975. And in 1978, and in 1982, and in 1990. "
156 " We were two solitudes benefiting from a grace that was continuously reinvigorated in each other’s presence, two solitudes who nourished each other. "
157 " My voice had no home until her. "
158 " Death is the only vantage point from which a life can be truly measured. "
159 " Death comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes. No one escapes the little tag on the big toe. The four horsemen approach. The rider on the red horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth war.” The rider on the black horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth plague.” The rider on the pale horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth death.” The rider on the white horse says, “Fuck this good and faithful servant. He is a non-Christian homosexual, for God’s sake. You brought me all the way out here for a fucking fag, a heathen. I didn’t die for this dingbat’s sins.” The irascible rider on the white horse leads the other three lemmings away. The hospital bed hurts my back. "
160 " I feel at home in my rituals. "