186 Quotes by Rabih Alameddine

I believe that the choice of a first book, the book that opens your eyes and quickens your soul, is as involuntary as a first crush.

Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent-a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet is insufferable.

...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.

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.

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. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble. I have adapted tamely, though not conventionally, to this visible world so I can retreat without much inconvenience into my inner world of books.

In order to live, I have to blind myself to my infinitesimal dimensions in this infinite universe.

How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?

Me? I was lost for long time. I didn’t make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school […]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. […]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first.

I was always alone, Doc, solitary whether I wished to be or not, ever since I could remember I wished to be lost in another, thought that somehow I could disappear into that heart of yours, take walks within your veins, wander through the bones of you. You had friends, Satan said, you loved and were loved, you must not forget that, at least not that. But did I allow anyone in, I asked Satan, and he said, Did you, does anyone?