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... we die, just as we were born, at the edge of a road not of our choosing.
Amin Maalouf
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Amin Maalouf
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: February 25
Author
Journalist
Librettist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Edge
Edges
Road
Dies
Born
Choosing
More quotes by Amin Maalouf
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
Nothing is born of nothing, least of all knowledge, modernity, or enlightened thought progress is made in tiny surges, in successive laps, like an endless relay race. But there are links without which nothing would be passed on, and for that reason, they deserve the gratitude of all who benefited from them.
Amin Maalouf
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?
Amin Maalouf
The identity cannot be compartmentalized it cannot be split in halves or thirds, nor have any clearly defined set of boundaries. I do not have several identities, I only have one, made of all the elements that have shaped its unique proportions.
Amin Maalouf
Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around.
Amin Maalouf
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
All pleasures must be paid for, do not despise those that state their price.
Amin Maalouf
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
Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.
Amin Maalouf
A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous.
Amin Maalouf
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.
Amin Maalouf
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
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
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
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?
Amin Maalouf
Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs.
Amin Maalouf
are you certain that a man's life begins with his birth?
Amin Maalouf
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
In my prayers, I want to say: Lord, don’t be far from me, and also don’t come too close. Let me contemplate the stars on the texture of your cloth, but don’t unveil your face to me. Allow me to hear the rivers that you send running, but Lord! Lord! Don’t allow me hearing your voice
Amin Maalouf
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.
Amin Maalouf
