What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity?.

I'm surprised how often I'm asked about being a man with a woman narrator. I'm not the first, nor will I be the last. It's been done forever, but we ….

You look at the Koran or the Bible, they all tell the same stories. You see them as the stories of the Middle East. The stories reflect who these peo….

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 ….

I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself..

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't..

Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one's wall, even if only for a mo….

When I published my first work, I thought I would never be able to go back to Lebanon. I thought they'd arrest me at the airport. I thought I would c….

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 ….

I'm an atheist, a devout atheist, but I find religion fascinating. Primarily because of cultural references, as in: This is what we grew up with. Bot….

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don’t bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it les….

I think in Arabic at times, but when I'm writing it's all in English. And I don't try to make my English sound more Arabic, because it would be phony….

When I'm writing I don't feel any pressure. It's after I'm done that I start freaking out. But really, when I'm in Lebanon, I don't write much becaus….

By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, ….

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 ….

By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across - each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip - is a cof….

I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality..

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 i….

How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fi….

...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of event….

The eye always fills in the imperfections..