Rabih Alameddine Quotes
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There are over 1 million refugees in Lebanon, a country of 4 million people. How do we solve that? I have no idea. What's going on, I really don't know.
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In Lebanon, there are completely different opinions and values in one country in terms of religion, modernity, tradition, East and West - which allows for a kind of intellectual development not available anywhere else.
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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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Close friends consider me a literary snob.
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When I wrote my first book, 'Koolaids,' I felt rejected and not wanted.
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If I were to pray in Arabic, I'd pray to Allah. If I were to pray in English, I'd pray to God.
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For me, soccer was a dance.
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Nobody ever calls me a soccer-playing writer, even though I play soccer and it's part of who I am.
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A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy.
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The relationship between France and its 'foreign' players - blacks and North African Arabs - has always been troubled, particularly with Algerians.
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English has always had a special fondness for other European languages, a neighborly soft spot - perhaps because Britain has been invaded by speakers of those languages from the onset of its recorded history.
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'Harat' is actually - it's a Lebanese dialect word. It comes from 'the mapmaker,' somebody who makes a map. And it basically means somebody who tells fibs or exaggerate tales a little bit.
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I can make up stories with the best of them. I've been telling stories since I was a little kid.
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In 1975, I left the burning city of Beirut for the quiet insanity of England. To say that short, frail and wispy 15-year-old me didn't fit in would be such an understatement as to be a joke.
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When I was younger, I used to find stories about divas charming. Not much anymore.
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I know many sports fans that don't enjoy soccer. The argument is that there's no action, not enough of it.
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Soccer is the most widely played sport in the U.S.
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If you go through any culture that has had wars, go to the bomb shelters, and you'll hear some amazing stories. Yes, it's a necessary thing that we actually both distract ourselves and it's a way to bond.
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In 1982, Algeria made their first appearance at the World Cup. I believe it was the first Arab country to do so.
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As teenagers, a lot of us just did not want much to do with Arabic culture - we looked to the West.
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I loved problems on paper, and I was good at math, but I was a mechanical engineer, and I never understood - or cared to - how a car worked.
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I stuck out more in an English public school than I would have had I marched in a May Day parade with the Red Army in Moscow or sashayed the Yves St. Laurent catwalk with supermodels or hunted seals with the Inuit or - well, you get the idea.
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I allegedly am an outsider writer, so I write from the perspective of somebody who doesn't completely fit in. But at the same time, I can state the fact that I don't know of any good writer who is not an outsider writer.
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I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one.