Rabih Alameddine Quotes
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I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That's how much I loved you. That's how much.
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I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.
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Homophobia is rampant in soccer, probably more so than in any other sport. I'm not sure why.
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We seem, particularly over here in the West and in America in particular, to have forgotten that we are, in large measures, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.
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I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.
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A team without hope fizzles: no flameout, no fire.
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I gave up on the delusion that these players enjoy soccer as much as I do, that they play for the love of the game.
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I always assumed that everyone knew no country would ever be awarded a World Cup without pricey gifts exchanging hands under the tables.
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Now I love hoops. I'm a diehard UCLA fan, have been since my freshman year. But basketball is the '1812 Overture.' Pomp and circumstance, fireworks and cannons, lots and lots of fun, and in the end, still Tchaikovsky.
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Every writer uses his own way to motivate oneself.
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I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.
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Whenever I come across an Arabic word mired in English text, I am momentarily shocked out of the narrative.
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The Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990, spanned four World Cups. It would have been a more symmetrical five had the Lebanese begun in 1974, but you know, we're Mediterranean, and timing isn't our forte.
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When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.
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I oscillate between being cynical and being naive on a regular basis. I always think that not much shocks me until something much too obvious does.
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I started writing half a paragraph of a mystery novel, half a paragraph there, and they were terrible.
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A game of soccer induces more than enjoyment, more than entertainment.
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I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really.
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I read Shakespeare when I was 14 because it's what we were taught.
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I jokingly say if there was one great thing about, you know, the Lebanese Civil War was that it forced me to read.
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I've never had a problem finding a team, a league, or a pickup game. Actually, I'm not sure I want soccer to get bigger. We have so many teams in San Francisco that there aren't enough fields.
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Before prognostication, a disclaimer: I have never been able to pick a winner. Not that it has ever stopped me from trying to. Well, it has stopped me from buying stock, but let's not talk about that.
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A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona.
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No one needs to be reminded of racism in soccer: the xenophobia, the nativism and, yes, nationalism.