Quotes from Amin Maalouf

I have always thought that Heaven invented all the problems, and Hell the solutions.

Tu demandes d'où vient notre souffle de vie. S'il fallait résumer une trop longue histoire, Je dirais qu'il surgit du fond de l'océan, Puis soudain l'océan l'engloutit à nouveau. Omar Khayyam

It seems clear that the Arab East still sees the West as a natural enemy. Against that enemy, any hostile action-be it political, military, or based on oil-is considered no more than legitimate vengeance. And there can be no doubt that the schism between these two worlds dates from the Crusades, deeply felt by the Arabs, even today, as an act of rape

Merasa diperlakukan tidak adil kadang bisa menimbulkan luka, tetapi kadang juga bisa menyembuhkan luka, dan bahkan kadang juga bisa membunuh orang yang merasakannya. Tetapi bagi wanita, perasaan itu lebih sering menjadi alasan yang kuat untuk bertahan

At my age, only naivete still manages to scandalize me sometimes.

All pleasures must be paid for, do not despise those that state their price.

We live in the age of the secret and of fear. You must have two faces. Show one to the crowd, and keep the other for yourself and your Creator. If you want to keep your eyes, your ears and your tongue, forget that you have them.

Il ne sert à rien de regretter sa jeunesse, Ni de maudire la vieillesse, Ni d'avoir peur de la mort, Ta vie, c'est la journée que tu es en train de vivre, Rien d'autre. Alors divertis-toi, sois heureux, Et sois prêt à partir. (p.424)

Les médias reflètent ce que disent les gens, les gens reflètent ce que disent les médias. Ne va-t-on jamais se lasser de cet abrutissant jeu de miroirs?

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.

L'identité ne se compartimente pas, elle ne se répartit ni par moitiés, ni par tiers, ni par plages cloisonnées.

Kral?na kar?? hakl? olan bir vekil, kocas?na kar?? hakl? olan bir kad?n, subay?na kar?? hakl? olan bir nefer; bunlar?n hepsi iki kat cezaya çarpt?r?lmaz m?? Zay?flar için hakl? olmak suçtur.

Gelmek bir yolun sonuna varmak de?il, insan her menzilde bir yere var?r.

You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you'll understand quite a lot.

Yaralar?n hissedilmesi için tan?mlanmaya ihtiyaçlar? yoktur.

By living exclusively for the present, we let ourselves be hemmed in by an ocean of death. Conversely, by reviving the past, we enlarge our living space.

The past is bound to be fragmentary, bound to be reconstructed, bound to be reinvented. It serves only to collect the truths of today. If our present is the child of the past, our past is the child of the present. And the future will be the harvester of our bastard offspring.

Someone other than I might have used the word "roots". It is not part of my vocabulary. I don't like the word, and I like even less the image it conveys. Roots burrow into the ground, twist in the mud, and thrive in darkness; they hold trees in captivity from their inception and nourish them at the price of blackmail: "Free yourself and you'll die

Le temps a deux visages, deux dimensions, la longueur est au rythme du soleil, l'épaisseur au rythme des passions.

Our ancestors are our children; we peer through a hole in the wall and watch them play in their rooms, and they can't see us.

Few doctrines throughout History have been able to eradicate hatred, most of them have simply tried to deflect it from one object to another: to the infidel, the foreigner, the apostate, the master, the slave, the father. Naturally, hatred is only called hatred when we see it in others; the hatred which is in ourselves bears a thousand different names.

Le destin passe et repasse à travers nous, comme l'aiguille du cordonnier à travers le cuir qu'il façonne.

Why should we take the diversity of human cultures less seriously than the diversity of animal or plant species? Ought not our just desire to preserve our environment extend to the human environment itself? Our world would be a dreary place, both from the natural and from the cultural point of view, if the only surviving species were those we consider "useful," together with a few we judge to be decorative or that have acquired symbolic value.

Time has two faces, Khayyam said to himself. It has two dimensions, its length is measured by the rhythm of the sun but its depth by the rhythm of passion.