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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“I was scared. Not of the writing – but of remembering. Of telling the truth about the moments I was still scared to speak about out loud. The drugs. The betrayal. The jail cell. The blood on the sheets. The men who hit me. The ones I went back to anyway. The shame. The silence. But I knew this was the right time. Because I finally didn’t care about being judged. I cared about being real. That was the day I realized – telling my story wasn’t about fixing the past. It was about finally letting it go.”

“I was scared that no one would hire me. At that time, there was still a stigma attached to it. A big stigma. Actually, I think I was healthier after the operation than some people who have bypass surgery because I was completely cured. But when you mentioned "heart transplant," you got a very negative reaction. It triggered people's imaginations, and not in a good way.”

“I was scared to death because for the comics of my generation, HBO specials are like the pinnacle. I'm thinking of all these unbelievable comedians I've seen on HBO: Chris Rock, George Carlin, Damon Wayans, Richard Pryor and Billy Crystal. I started having a panic attack seeing my name in that list of people. It was pretty overwhelming.”

“I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.”

“I was seduced by the nouvelle vague, because it was really reinventing everything. And the Italian cinema that one would see in the theaters in the late '50s, early '60s was Italian comedy, Italian style, which, to me, was like the end of neo-realism. I think cinema all over the world was influenced by it, which was Italy finding its freedom at the end of fascism, the end of the Nazi invasion. It was a kind of incredible energy. Then, late '50s, early '60s, the neo-realism lost its great energy and became comedy.”

“I was seeing in these awkward composites my own liminal self. The two sides of me that were slammed together against their will, that refused to mix. I was a failed hybrid, made up of unalloyed selves. My Russian mother who regretted marrying my Sudanese father. My African father who came to hate his white wife. My atheist mother who blotted out my Muslim heritage. My Arab father who gave me up to Europe without a fight. I was the freak. I had been told so and I had been taught so and I had chewed on this verdict to the extent that, no matter what, I could never purge myself of it entirely.”

“I was seeing this girl and she wanted to get more serious. But I wasn't ready to, I had just gotten out of a difficult relationship before that. So I said to her, 'Listen, you have to understand something. Relationships are like eyebrows. It's better when there's a space between them.' And that's coming from a Greek guy.”