Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddineis a Lebanese-American painter and writer. He was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California. A lover of mathematics, he earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angelesand a Master of Business in San Francisco. He began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. The author of...
NationalityLebanese
ProfessionArtist
CountryLebanon
great taken upset
I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.
bad
I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one.
boarding lebanese school shipped war
When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.
pick
I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.
began organized since teams
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.
fact fit good outsider perspective somebody state time
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.
assumed awarded country knew
I always assumed that everyone knew no country would ever be awarded a World Cup without pricey gifts exchanging hands under the tables.
people playing united
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%.
english hunted moscow parade public school seals
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.
develops meanings
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.
basically exaggerate lebanese means somebody tales tells
'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.
best since telling
I can make up stories with the best of them. I've been telling stories since I was a little kid.
two vanity people
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.
love dream knives
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.