Quotes by Rabih Alameddine

She felt the intimate loss of who was meant to become.

Can you imagine how lonely she must have felt when she received that phone call? Your lover has just died, your companion has abandoned you, but dont you dare make an inappropriate sound, because your family is around. No one to touch you the way he did, no one to understand you, no one to hug you to sleep, but dont dare allow your face to show a glint of grief. The cutting pain of feeling alone amid loved ones.

I realised when it came to men, I did not pick the beautiful or the correct. I picked the wrong one.

I told her I was not sure I could bear living with memories, she said, Look up at the stars, look, they are not there, what you see is the memory of what once was, once upon a time.

The receding perspective of my past smothers my present. Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now.

Memory chooses to preserve what desire cannot hope to sustain.

In every evocation of a childhood scene, my stepfathers face is the least detailed, the most out of focus; when I think of him my memorys eyes have cataracts.

I was a lonely boy. I spent all my time reading books and watching the world. [some] tried to draw me out at first, but their hearts werent in it. And after all, they had enough troubles of their own.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they dont.

Like all cities, Beirut has many layers, and I had been familiar with one or two. What I was introduced to that day with Ali and Kamal was the Beirut of its people. You take different groups, put them on top of each other, simmer for a thousand years, keep adding more and more strange tribes, simmer for another few thousand years, salt and pepper with religion, and what you get is a delightful mess of a stew that still tastes delectable and exotic, no matter how many times you partake of it.

On Lous lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer himself, stories told through the night, the tortures, the beatings, the broken bones, every school has its Tigellinus, but his had more than one and each with followers, all-American boys who delighted in discovering how much pain a soul could withstand, two suicide attempts and all his parents and school could do was try to make Lou change his behavior, his behavior, his behavior, his, his, his, to modify his being just a bit. It gets better, Doc, fucking gets better, no one dared suggest that maybe the family and the school should change, or heaven forbid, that it was the all-Americans who should be modifying their beings, no, the homo should grin and bear it dumbly...

We rarely consider that were also formed by the decisions we didnt make, by events that could have happened but didnt, or by our lack of choices, for that matter.

No nostalgia is felt as keenly as nostalgia for things that never existed.

Had I known that coffee could taste so good, I would have gotten drunk on it every day.

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.

Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful.But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it.Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns.And then he desired sex.He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together.Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet.But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?

He may be my half brother, but were not related. A chasm of incommunicable worlds lies between us.

No matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden.Shell also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.

...I wondered at times whether I would wake up and this would be just a bad dream, a nightmare that I could wish away, I had the same fantasy when you were sick, Doc, that I would one day wake up and you all would be healthy and alive.