Rabih Alameddine Quotes

In my opinion when you speak about relationships between people, you are actually talking about everything in their world because everything is contained in that relationship.

In my very own self, I am part of my family.

I was always an Olsen. I never thought of myself as a Brady. I never actually wanted to be a Brady. I always preferred my own family to the Bradys.

I'm convinced that if we don't define ourselves, other people will do it for us, and inaccurately.

The family is a community of love where each of us learns to relate to others and to the world around us.

Relationships can be about yourself, they can be about you and your god, you and your people, you and your family. It can be about a lot of different stuff. And it is.

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

Some people are your family no matter when you find them, and some people are not, even if you are laid, still wet and crumpled, in their arms.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.

When you identify yourself with a group of people or a set of ideas, aren't you separating yourself?

But now I’m wondering if I need it anymore, if we ever really need these words, “Dauntless,” “Erudite,” “Divergent,” “Allegiant,” or if we can just be friends or lovers or siblings, defined instead by the choices we make and the love and loyalty that binds us.

Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the idea of being thrown together with a group of people you might have a lot in common with, or nothing at all. You don't have the option of doing anything other than making your family relationships work - forever. I like that.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.

You know, we have two families: the one we're born into, and the one that we make for ourselves afterwards.

I think the themes of belonging and parentage and love are obviously universal.

We all need a firm sense of identity.

I think home has become my friends and family, wherever they are.

I don't feel as if I belong to an age group.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am 'known for' is what I am.

You forge different bonds with friends than with family, tell different secrets.

I've basically thought of myself as a writer, whether I was or not.

I'm also fascinated by the interplay between personal history and the larger forces that form the context for our lives.

Relationships with parents, grandparents, friends, and siblings were important to me when I was young and have remained so throughout my life. Our relationships with other people both shape and reflect who we are. These relationships are infinitely fascinating to explore!