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Quote by Rabih Alameddine

Work

I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

In 'I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters,' the reader is introduced to a narrative that intertwines the profound with the personal. The opening sections of the novel present a unique perspective on the nature of divinity and its impact on human life. The story is crafted to provoke thought and engage the reader's imagination, with a focus on the intricate interplay between the divine and the human condition. more

Author

Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine

Rabih Alameddine is a Lebanese-American writer known for his poetic prose and exploration of Arab-American identity, LGBTQ+ themes, and Middle Eastern culture. Born in Beirut in 1959, he moved to the United States in 1990. His notable works include The Angel of History, An Unnecessary Woman, The Hakawati, and Koolaids. Alameddine's writing, characterized by lyrical language and innovative narrative techniques, has been nominated for numerous literary awards, making him one of the most significant contemporary Arab-American authors. more

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“Every motion she made was slow, as if she’d never before put her arms around a man, and didn’t know for certain where everything fit. When at last they were pressed close, she didn’t think she’d know how to let go when the time came. They summarized the course of passion with kisses: a chaste, half-frightened brush of the lips metamorphosed into something fierce and fast-burning, which in its turn became a more patient, more intimate touch, full of inquiry and shared pleasure.”

“Sex with a writer should be on any and everyone’s bucket list. Like a box of chocolates, you’d have no clue which of our multiple personalities you’d encounter. Odds are, you’d find that perfect lover. So perfect this inamorata and/or inamorato that your psyche would forever be consumed with hopes that you’d, again, experience, even for a brief moment, the all-encompassing magmatism of that carnal deity within.”

“As soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself, it always creates the world in its own image. It cannot do otherwise. Philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual iteration of the Will to Power, the Will to 'creation of the world anew', the Will to the causa prima. As Philosophies emerge from the cave of shadows & symbols, they insist this world too is the work of symbol & shadow; a mystery to be solved. But we cannot know our world in any empirical sense; the five we have been given, allow us to see a minute fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, & our senses of smell, taste, & hearing leave us no better off than the three blind English scholars, confronted with an African Elephant, something their learning has failed to acquaint them with. As they each report from their stations around the beast, one of them gropes the tail, certain he holds a vine. Another wrestles with the powerful trunk, equally certain it must be a python, or some other breed of tree-dwelling snake, just as their third peer has examined the strange bark of the animal's leg. Together they conclude that even without their eyes, tactility & logic have revealed a jungle tree, it's branches dangling vines and a powerful snake. In passing, he had even cheated, feeling one of its great, broad ears, which could only logically a great, broad, leaf, swaying in the breeze. Two of the three scholars declared the 'truth' a prank to discredit them. We are those blind men, blind to the realities that science has often flawed & misleading methods of 'seeing' the whole elephant. But science remains a tool; the most powerful tool we possess in freeing ourselves from the willful blindness of religion & political faith, but a tool nonetheless. It will have to evolve, & avoid the dogmatic attitudes which already corrupt it. The name of science is given to the pseudo-science of psychology & psychotherapy, which certainly promise to be useful down the road, but are incapable of producing repeatable results, and fails even to produce identical variables. Everything about Psychology & the social 'sciences' belong in the realm of Philosophy, but weakness & corruption, followed by the call of greed, power, & control have allowed this intellectual toxin to exert a dangerous influence; next to Religious cults, Psychology-based cults like NXIM are growing rapidly.”