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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.

Amin Maalouf

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Amin Maalouf
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: February 25
Author
Journalist
Librettist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Language
Paradox
Facts
Islam
Mother
Tongue
Basic
Identity
Paradoxes
Holy
Arabic
Fact
Simultaneously
Christian
Shaped

More quotes by Amin Maalouf

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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.
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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.
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Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.
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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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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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Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around.
Amin Maalouf
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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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Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs.
Amin Maalouf
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are you certain that a man's life begins with his birth?
Amin Maalouf
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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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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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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.
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People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.
Amin Maalouf
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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
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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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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
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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
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All pleasures must be paid for, do not despise those that state their price.
Amin Maalouf
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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?
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