Rawi Hage Quotes

Never underestimate a clown with a book.

Nothing to be proud of, nothing to regret.

In cities it is useless to look at the stars or to describe them, worship them, or seek direction from them. When lost, one should follow the tracks of the camels.

I don't judge those who can't dream, those who need to pierce their arms to create different worlds under their skin, because I am fortunate in the tools of my escapes

Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person's face that anything changes

All libraries must submit to a certain order, I answered. Indeed, agreed the professor, or all will be lost. The fall of nations and empires begins with the fall of libraries.

Communists and Muslims are not the enemies to fear in this land, Fly. It is the food consumption that will eventually blow up in everyone’s faces.

So long, I replied, may we all have one good flight before we rest among flowers and the orbits of hungry worms.

There are two ways to taste things in life: the sweet way and the bitter way.

Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person’s face that anything changes. All empires are hungry cannibals...

The moon should be colonised, I thought. Mankind should seek a happier beginning, and humans should be free to stroll hand in hand regardless of their weight and orientation.

What reader or dreamer doesn’t imagine the romantic life of a writer, who lingers between the desk and the fridge in the morning and in the evening attends cocktail parties thrown by nouveaux riches and the society ladies who hardly ever have the time to read?

This lesser world is all about reproduction, as you might well know. Those who cease to duplicate simply die.

Poor Mary. They married her to Jesus, and Jesus is an asexual circumcised revolutionary. What future is there to be had in that scenario?

Fiction is overrated, Fly. We’ve discussed this. In the time it takes those novelist fuckers to contemplate a few poetic passages, a thousand kids die from malnutrition. Immediacy, man, that’s what counts.

I beg your pardon, sir, said the Frenchman. I am not a coloniser.Well, let’s talk Algeria then. Let’s talk about your culture and your celebrated writers.

What the fuck is legal in this universe? Stars eat each other, wolves eat the pigs, and Grandma fucks over Little Red Riding Hood.