Quotes from Amin Maalouf

We are not just visitors on this planet, it belongs to us just as we belong to her, its past is ours, so is its future.

I am the son of the road , my country is a caravan and my life is the most unexpected of voyages. i belong to earth and to the god and it is to them that I will one day soon return

life is not so long that one can grow tired of it

I have the profoundest respect for people who behave in a generous way because of religion. But I come from a country where the misuse of religion has had catastrophic consequences. One must judge people not by what faith they proclaim but by what they do.

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.

It's the relationship I have with the world: always trying to escape from reality. I'm a daydreamer; I don't feel in harmony with my epoch or the societies I live in.

are you certain that a man's life begins with his birth?

Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.

Isn't it a characteristic of the age we live in that it has made everyone in a way a migrant and a member of a minority?

We are not just visitors on this planet, it belongs to us just as we belong to her, its past is ours, so is its future.