Rabih Alameddine Quotations

When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.

One of the things I enjoy most during the World Cup is watching a team improve, mature, and gel during the course of the tournament.

No one needs to be reminded of racism in soccer: the xenophobia, the nativism and, yes, nationalism.

My father loved Brazilian football, a diehard follower, so of course, he hated Germany and always rooted against them, always.

My father and I rarely saw eye to eye when I was growing up. We saw the world differently. It was only when we were both adults that we were able to share spectacles. However, football, and particularly the World Cup, was when we, enemy combatants, could traverse trenches and be together.

Nobody ever calls me a soccer-playing writer, even though I play soccer and it's part of who I am.

I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really.

I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.

I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one.

'Harat' is actually - it's a Lebanese dialect word. It comes from 'the mapmaker,' somebody who makes a map. And it basically means somebody who tells fibs or exaggerate tales a little bit.

I allegedly am an outsider writer, so I write from the perspective of somebody who doesn't completely fit in. But at the same time, I can state the fact that I don't know of any good writer who is not an outsider writer.

I always assumed that everyone knew no country would ever be awarded a World Cup without pricey gifts exchanging hands under the tables.

I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.

Language, after all, is organic. You can't force words into existence. You can't force new meanings into words. And some words can't or won't or shouldn't be laundered or neutered. Language develops naturally.

I was gay before I began to play soccer over 40 years ago. It's been 28 years since a friend and I organized one of the first gay soccer teams in the world.

I think I'm being conservative when I say there are more people playing soccer in the United States than in 90% of the world's other countries, probably 95%.

I stuck out more in an English public school than I would have had I marched in a May Day parade with the Red Army in Moscow or sashayed the Yves St. Laurent catwalk with supermodels or hunted seals with the Inuit or - well, you get the idea.

There are over 1 million refugees in Lebanon, a country of 4 million people. How do we solve that? I have no idea. What's going on, I really don't know.

When I wrote my first book, 'Koolaids,' I felt rejected and not wanted.

When I was younger, I used to find stories about divas charming. Not much anymore.

Whenever I come across an Arabic word mired in English text, I am momentarily shocked out of the narrative.

Every writer uses his own way to motivate oneself.

We seem, particularly over here in the West and in America in particular, to have forgotten that we are, in large measures, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

The reasons why a player is better on one club than on another are many. I certainly am not an expert and can't explain.

As teenagers, a lot of us just did not want much to do with Arabic culture - we looked to the West.

English has always had a special fondness for other European languages, a neighborly soft spot - perhaps because Britain has been invaded by speakers of those languages from the onset of its recorded history.

I started writing half a paragraph of a mystery novel, half a paragraph there, and they were terrible.

I've never had a problem finding a team, a league, or a pickup game. Actually, I'm not sure I want soccer to get bigger. We have so many teams in San Francisco that there aren't enough fields.

A game of soccer induces more than enjoyment, more than entertainment.

Now I love hoops. I'm a diehard UCLA fan, have been since my freshman year. But basketball is the '1812 Overture.' Pomp and circumstance, fireworks and cannons, lots and lots of fun, and in the end, still Tchaikovsky.

A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona.

A player should be disparaged if he gives less than his all, if he doesn't give 100%, no matter what shirt he's wearing. Whether it's your national team, your club, or little league. Yes, there are friendly matches, recreational ones, and so on, but sport in its essence is about giving your best.

The relationship between France and its 'foreign' players - blacks and North African Arabs - has always been troubled, particularly with Algerians.

A team without hope fizzles: no flameout, no fire.

A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy.

Soccer is the most widely played sport in the U.S.

I jokingly say if there was one great thing about, you know, the Lebanese Civil War was that it forced me to read.

I loved problems on paper, and I was good at math, but I was a mechanical engineer, and I never understood - or cared to - how a car worked.

In 1982, Algeria made their first appearance at the World Cup. I believe it was the first Arab country to do so.

In 1975, I left the burning city of Beirut for the quiet insanity of England. To say that short, frail and wispy 15-year-old me didn't fit in would be such an understatement as to be a joke.

In Lebanon, there are completely different opinions and values in one country in terms of religion, modernity, tradition, East and West - which allows for a kind of intellectual development not available anywhere else.

If I were to pray in Arabic, I'd pray to Allah. If I were to pray in English, I'd pray to God.

I oscillate between being cynical and being naive on a regular basis. I always think that not much shocks me until something much too obvious does.

If you go through any culture that has had wars, go to the bomb shelters, and you'll hear some amazing stories. Yes, it's a necessary thing that we actually both distract ourselves and it's a way to bond.

In the summer of 1988, my father took me up to look at the remains of our home, the dream house that he'd built. It was my first time since our family left four years earlier. Political and obscene graffiti covered the half-torn walls. There was no ceiling and surprisingly no floor: the parquet, the stone, the marble, all looted.

I know many sports fans that don't enjoy soccer. The argument is that there's no action, not enough of it.

I have to admit, I'm not patriotic. It has partly to do with principle, but it is also a phobia/neurosis.

In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.

If you want to know whether soccer is big in America, pick a weekend, go to any park in the land, and pay attention. We're there. We've always been.

I gave up on the delusion that these players enjoy soccer as much as I do, that they play for the love of the game.

I read Shakespeare when I was 14 because it's what we were taught.

Before prognostication, a disclaimer: I have never been able to pick a winner. Not that it has ever stopped me from trying to. Well, it has stopped me from buying stock, but let's not talk about that.

Homophobia is rampant in soccer, probably more so than in any other sport. I'm not sure why.

I couldn't tell the truth if my life depended on it.

I can make up stories with the best of them. I've been telling stories since I was a little kid.

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 don't.

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.

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?

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don’t bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don’t rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can?

By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.

What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity?

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.

Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one's wall, even if only for a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.

The eye always fills in the imperfections.

I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.

...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.

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.

I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.

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?

All living languages are promiscuous. We promiscuous speakers shamelessly shoplift words, plucking bons mots and phrases from any tempting language. We wear these words when we wish to be more formal, more elegant, more mysterious, worldly, precise, vague.

The Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990, spanned four World Cups. It would have been a more symmetrical five had the Lebanese begun in 1974, but you know, we're Mediterranean, and timing isn't our forte.