" A while back Czesław Miłosz wrote in an essay that in today’s age of technology and mass mobility “the whole nostalgic rhetoric of patria fed by literature since Odysseus journeyed to Ithaca, has been weakened if not forgotten.” Weakened, possibly, but I think not forgotten. It is that longing for a mythical homeland, not necessarily a physical one, that inspires art. Without that longing, patria is nothing more than the name of a Finnish company that produces armored vehicles used by Israel in its wars on Lebanon, or the name of an Argentine submachine gun. I appreciate longing. I also appreciate irony. "

― Rabih Alameddine , An Unnecessary Woman