Quote

When I'm writing I don't feel any pressure. It's after I'm done that I start freaking out. But really, when I'm in Lebanon, I don't write much because I'm surrounded by family. I feel immersed, or enmeshed, in too many currents. I love that, but it's not conducive to writing. In San Francisco, nothing interferes with me but my cats.

Rabih Alameddine

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Rabih Alameddine
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: January 1
Artist
Author
Novelist
Writer
Nothing
Surrounded
Enmeshed
Done
Cats
Interferes
Many
Currents
Freaking
Feel
Cat
Conducive
Writing
Pressure
Immersed
Much
Start
Lebanon
Really
Family
Francisco
Love
Write
Interfere

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What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity?
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I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not?
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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.
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For someone like me and my generation, you had to speak French to be sophisticated, you had to be lighter-skinned.
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I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That's how much I loved you. That's how much.
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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?
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I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.
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By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across - each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip - is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.
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