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For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free.

Amin Maalouf

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Amin Maalouf
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: February 25
Author
Journalist
Librettist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Look
Narrowest
Looks
Imprisons
Way
Allegiance
People
Within
Free
Often
Also
May
Allegiances

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are you certain that a man's life begins with his birth?
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The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity.
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life is not so long that one can grow tired of it
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Isn't it a characteristic of the age we live in that it has made everyone in a way a migrant and a member of a minority?
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I am the son of the road , my country is a caravan and my life is the most unexpected of voyages. i belong to earth and to the god and it is to them that I will one day soon return
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Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around.
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All pleasures must be paid for, do not despise those that state their price.
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Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?
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Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices
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... we die, just as we were born, at the edge of a road not of our choosing.
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Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs.
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During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.
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Let your tears roll tonight, but tomorrow you will start the battle again. What defeats us, always, is just our own sorrow.
Amin Maalouf
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What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself
Amin Maalouf
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We are not just visitors on this planet, it belongs to us just as we belong to her, its past is ours, so is its future.
Amin Maalouf
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You can't say history teaches us this or that it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question.
Amin Maalouf
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I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road... all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them.
Amin Maalouf
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How do I pray? I study a rose, I count the stars, I marvel at the beauty of creation and how perfectly ordered it is, at man, the most beautiful work of the Creator, his brain thirsting for knowledge, his heart for love, and his senses, all his senses alert or gratified.
Amin Maalouf
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God, she was beautiful - my first image of the Orient - a woman such as only the desert poet knew how to praise: her face was the sun, her hair the protecting shadow, her eyes fountains of cool water, her body the most slender of palm-trees and her smile a mirage.
Amin Maalouf
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A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous.
Amin Maalouf