By remaining constrained in ...

By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.
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 Rabih Alameddine

Quotes from the same author

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.
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 Rabih Alameddine
I love a lot of American writers, but I think that for the most part the scope of what's accepted as great American writing is very limited. What we have is good, but it's limited. There's not enough engagement with the world. Our literature's not adventurous enough. The influence of MFA writing tends to make things repetitive. The idea that writing can be taught has changed the whole conversation in the U.S.
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 Rabih Alameddine
The whole world is going insane right now. We, too, have our own problems. The president of Lebanon is an arch-menace. But I think, as horrid as he is - and he is absolutely insane - he's still more sane than Trump, so that tells me a lot.
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 Rabih Alameddine
I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.
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 Rabih Alameddine
Me? I was lost for long time. I didn’t make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school […]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. […]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first.
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 Rabih Alameddine