amin maalouf

“Yes indeed, both Muslim and Jewish!I, her father, am Muslim, at least on paper; her mother is Jewish, at least in theory. With us, religion is transmitted through the father; among Jews, through the mother. Therefore, according to the Muslims, Nadia was Muslim; according to the Jews, she was Jewish. She herself might have chosen one or the other, or neither, she chose to be both at once...Yes, both at once and more. She was proud of all the bloodlines that had converged in her, roads of conquest or exile from central Asia, Anatolia, the Ukraine, Arab, Bessarabia, Armenia, Bavaria...She refused to divide out her blood, her soul.”

“Mas vale equivocarse en la esperanza que acertar en la desesperación”

“Clawing its way towards us, the ugliness of the world tore away our hiding-place.”

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

“Yaraların hissedilmesi için tanımlanmaya ihtiyaçları yoktur.”

“God, she was beautiful - my first image of the Orient - a woman such as only the desert poet knew how to praise: her face was the sun, her hair the protecting shadow, her eyes fountains of cool water, her body the most slender of palm-trees and her smile a mirage.”

“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.”

“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)”

“D'un côté, la rigueur va à l'encontre du laxisme, de la nonchalance mentale, du laisser-aller, de l'à-peu-près - en somme, de tous ces fléaux qui, depuis trop longtemps, débilitent nos pays d'Orient. D'un autre côté, la rigueur est raideur, elle est rigidité morale - et en cela elle va à l'encontre de ce qui fait la suavité, et l'art de vivre, de nos contrées.(p.144)”

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

“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”

“Gelmek bir yolun sonuna varmak değil, insan her menzilde bir yere varır.”

“Kralına karşı haklı olan bir vekil, kocasına karşı haklı olan bir kadın, subayına karşı haklı olan bir nefer; bunların hepsi iki kat cezaya çarptırılmaz mı? Zayıflar için haklı olmak suçtur.”

“On les écouta, on compatit, on s'indigna, on promit, mais on ne bougea pas une lance”

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

“En chacun de nous existe un Mr Hyde; le tout est d’empêcher que les conditions d'émergence du monstre ne soient rassemblées.”

“... je sais parfaitement que la peur pourrait faire basculer n'importe quelle personne dans le crime.”

“When faced with a chaotic and convoluted situation, one always thinks that it will take centuries to sort it out. Suddenly a man appears and as if by magic, the tree we thought was doomed takes on new life and starts bearing leaves and fruits and giving shade." (Shireen in Samarkand)”

“Nikad ne molim Boga da me poštedi nevolja, već samo da me poštedi očaja. Ne gubi povjerenje: kada te Svevišnji ispusti iz jedne ruke, uhvati te drugom.”

“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”

“Lorsque l'esprit des hommes te paraîtra étroit, dis-toi que la terre de Dieu est vaste, et vastes Ses mains et Son coeur. N'hésite jamais à t'éloigner, au delà de toutes les mers, au-delà de toutes les frontières, de toutes les patries, de toutes les croyances”

“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.”

“... the pursuit of origins is a way of rescuing territory from death and oblivion, a reconquest that ought to be patient, devoted, relentless and faithful.”

“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.”

“Nothing is born of nothing, least of all knowledge, modernity, or enlightened thought; progress is made in tiny surges, in successive laps, like an endless relay race. But there are links without which nothing would be passed on, and for that reason, they deserve the gratitude of all who benefited from them.”

“Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around.”

“... we die, just as we were born, at the edge of a road not of our choosing.”

“oui, à chaque pas dans la vie, on rencontre une déception, une désillusion, une humiliation.”

“Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?”

“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?”

“Cette recommandation (Aime ton prochain comme toi-même) paraît, à première vue, irréprochable mais à voir ce que la plupart des gens font de leur vie, à voir ce qu'ils font de leur intelligence, je n'ai pas envie qu'ils m'aiment comme eux-mêmes.”

“La route quelquefois s'agrémente de fables, comme le sommeil s'agrémente de songes, il faut savoir ouvrir les yeux à l'arrivée.”

“La langue a vocation à demeurer le pivot de l'identité culturelle, et la diversité linguistique le pivot de toute diversité.”

“S'enfermer dans une mentalité d'agressé est plus dévastateur encore pour la victime de l'agression elle-même.”

“L'identité n'est pas donnée une fois pour toutes, elle se construit et se transforme tout au long de l'existence.”

“Chacune de mes appartenances me relie à un grand nombre de personnes; cependant, plus les appartenances que je prends en compte sont nombreuses, plus mon identité s'avère spécifique.”

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

“Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The English have devastated…", "The Jews have confiscated…", "The Blacks have torched", "The Arabs refuse…". We blithely express sweeping judgments on whole peoples, calling them "hardworking" and "ingenious", or "lazy", "touchy", "sly", "proud", or "obstinate". And sometimes this ends in bloodshed." – Amin Maalouf "On Identity”

“A mí, Hasan, hijo de Mohamed el alamín, a mí, Juan León de Médicis, circuncidado por la mano de un barbero y bautizado por la mano de un papa, me llaman hoy el Africano, pero ni de África, ni de Europa, ni de Arabia soy. Me llaman también el Granadino, el Fesí, el Zayyati, pero no procedo de ningún país, de ninguna ciudad, de ninguna tribu. Soy hijo del camino, caravana es mi patria y mi vida la más inesperada travesía. Mis muñecas han sabido a veces de las caricias de la seda y a veces de las injurias de la lana, del oro de los príncipes y de las cadenas de los esclavos. Mis dedos han levantado mil velos, mis labios han sonrojado a mil vírgenes, mis ojos han visto agonizar ciudades y caer imperios. Por boca mía oirás el árabe, el turco, el castellano, el beréber, el hebreo, el latín y el italiano vulgar, pues todas las lenguas, todas las plegarias me pertenecen. Mas yo no pertenezco a ninguna. No soy sino de Dios y de la tierra, y a ellos retornaré un día no lejano. Y tú permanecerás después de mí, hijo mío. Y guardarás mi recuerdo. Y leerás mis libros. Y entonces volverás a ver esta escena: tu padre, ataviado a la napolitana, en esta galera que lo devuelve a la costa africana, garrapateando como mercader que hace balance al final de un largo periplo. Pero no es esto, en cierto modo, lo que estoy haciendo: qué he ganado, qué he perdido, qué he de decirle al supremo Acreedor? Me ha prestado cuarenta años que he ido dispersando a merced de los viajes: mi sabiduría ha vivido en Roma, mi pasión en el Cairo, mi angustia en Fez, y en Granada vive aún mi inocencia.”

“People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.”

“let us thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; of night, that day is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning. Let us give thanks to Him for having given us weariness and pain, so that rest and joy are to have meaning. Let us give thanks to him, whose wisdom is infinite.”

“Let your tears roll tonight, but tomorrow you will start the battle again. What defeats us, always, is just our own sorrow. ”

“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.”

“Hatte ich nicht hinter der Legende die Wahrheit gesucht? Als ich den Kern der Wahrheit erreicht zu haben glaubte, da war er Legende.”

“So sind meine Berge nun mal: vereinen Heimatverbundenheit und Fernweh, sind Ort der Zuflucht und der Durchreise, ein Land, in dem Milch und Honig fließt, aber auch Blut. Weder Paradies noch Hölle. Fegefeuer.”

“Nichts weiter als eine Legende, sagst du? Du willst nichts weiter als Fakten? Fakten sind vergänglich, glaube mir das, nur die Legende bleibt, so wie die Seele nach dem Körper oder der Duft einer vorbeigegangenen Frau.”

“Eure Lippen haben sich gestreift, sind auseinander dann, Als sei euer Anteil am Glück bereits verbraucht und als hättet ihr Angst, vom Glück der anderen schon zu kosten. Ihr wart unschuldig? Wovor hat Unschuld je bewahrt? Selbst der Schöpfer sagt uns, wir sollen zu Festen Lämmer schlachten, Nie aber Wölfe...”

“Jedes Glück ist flüchtig, ob es nun eine Woche anhält oder dreißig Jahre; man weint die gleichen Tränen, wenn der letzte Tag heranbricht, und würde um einen Aufschub seine Seele verkaufen.”

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

“Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do.The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that--the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love.”