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
eye perfection imperfection
The eye always fills in the imperfections.
mean reality chaos
I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.
perspective perception stories
...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.
school boys years
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.
believe i-believe oneself
I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.
animal individuality trying
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?
civil great lebanese war
I jokingly say if there was one great thing about, you know, the Lebanese Civil War was that it forced me to read.
allowed arabic french school
In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.
park pay pick whether
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.
delusion enjoy gave love players
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.
anywhere available country east religion terms west
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.
languages speakers tempting wear wish
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.
begun civil five lebanese war
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.
car cared good loved mechanical understood
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.