Rabih Alameddine Quotes

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

Rabih Alameddine

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Quotes to Explore

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Time
  • Long
  • Literature

• I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Great
  • Taken
  • Literature

• Homophobia is rampant in soccer, probably more so than in any other sport. I'm not sure why.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Why
  • More
  • Soccer

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • America
  • Story
  • Forgotten

• I always assumed that everyone knew no country would ever be awarded a World Cup without pricey gifts exchanging hands under the tables.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • World
  • Country
  • Hands

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Game
  • Play
  • Enjoy

• A team without hope fizzles: no flameout, no fire.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Hope
  • Team
  • Fire

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Fun
  • End
  • Circumstance

• I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Up
  • Mother
  • Books

• Every writer uses his own way to motivate oneself.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Way
  • Writer
  • Own

• Whenever I come across an Arabic word mired in English text, I am momentarily shocked out of the narrative.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • English
  • Word
  • Text

• When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • School
  • War
  • Civil War

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • World
  • War
  • Civil War

• I started writing half a paragraph of a mystery novel, half a paragraph there, and they were terrible.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Writing
  • Mystery
  • Half

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Think
  • Obvious
  • Cynical

• A game of soccer induces more than enjoyment, more than entertainment.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Game
  • Soccer
  • Entertainment

• I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Time
  • Mind
  • Problem

• I couldn't tell the truth if my life depended on it.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Life
  • Truth
  • My Life

• I read Shakespeare when I was 14 because it's what we were taught.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Read
  • Because
  • Shakespeare

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Game
  • Team
  • Problem

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • History
  • Always
  • Phoenix

• 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.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Trying
  • Stock
  • Winner

• No one needs to be reminded of racism in soccer: the xenophobia, the nativism and, yes, nationalism.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Racism
  • Soccer
  • Nationalism