Emile Habiby > Quotes

“But what about the secret I bear?" I asked.
"Tell it to the world," he advised.
And that is what I am doing.”
― Emile Habiby

“Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they have themselves fabricated.”
― Emile Habiby

“So I knew then that she loved me; and I therefore loved her. I have always known that I will inevitably fall in love with any woman who loves me.”
― Emile Habiby

“In the so-called age of ignorance before Islam, our ancestors used to form their gods from dates and eat them when in need. Who is more ignorant then, dear sir, I or those who ate their gods?
You might say: “It is better for people to eat their gods than for the gods to eat them.”
But I’d respond: “Yes, but their gods were made of dates.”
--The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist”
― Emile Habiby, إميل حبيبي

“This is the way you always are. When you can bear the misery of your reality no longer but will not pay the price necessary to change it, only then you come to me.”
― Emile Habiby

“The seas are wide and flow together. They have no borders and have room enough for all fish.”
― Emile Habiby, الوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائل

“The ultimate tale - of the fish that understands all languages: "the seas are wide and flow together. They have no borders and have room enough for all fish.”
― Emile Habiby

“My first ancestor, Abjar son of Abjar, mounted on his horse outside the city walls, had stared back at the tongues and shouted, "After me, the deluge!”
― Emile Habiby

“Well, the British do have the right to boast about their history, you know, especially about that great king of theirs, Ricahrd the Lionhearted. But even without our teaching you all this, they were participating in the process of rendering our country holy by spilling our blood. Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they have themselves fabricated.”
― Emile Habiby

“My pure-white past did not so much atone for me as rather blacken my present all the more”
― Emile Habiby

“How I yeran for those days! For now not only the village of Tanturah but also its girl are gone. And the people of Jisr al-Zarqa have changed as well. They put their clothes back on, left the sea, and joined their neighbours who work the land, the people of Fraydis. Now none of them go down to the river or stand where it joins the sea, except for children playing truant and old men trying to escape the burdens of their age. And had it not been for the Nature Conservation Committee and the laudable campaign it conducted which succeeded in preventing the authorities from building an electric power station at the mouth of the river, my name, Saeed, would not remain carved on that limestone rock where Tanturiyya used to rest while we wove our glances the fabric of our future.”
― Emile Habiby

“How long must we wait for the lilies to bud?”
― Emile Habiby

“Yes, ever since that time I began looking upward and awaiting their arrival. Either they will transform my monotonous and boring life completely, or they can take me away with them.
Is there an alternative?”
― Emile Habiby

“Jacob, my old friend came first. he was sad. I shouted down to him, "The stake, old friend of a lifetime, do something!"
"But we all sit on one", was his reply.
"I don't see you on one," I objected.
"And we see nobody else's either. Each of us is alone, on his own stake. This is the stake we share.”
― Emile Habiby

“We're used to the wonders of today. Why, if our forebears were to arise and hear the radio, see television, and witness a jumbo jet landing at an airport, spitting and roaring in the pitch-black night, they would think us polytheists for sure.”
― Emile Habiby

“The moon is closer to us now than are the fig trees of our departed village. you accept all these wonders - why not mine too?”
― Emile Habiby

“His eyes I saw too. Large and profound, they seemed to increase in depth as the dark fell on them, then to resurface as the lighthouse beam caught them again, as if symbolising in rapid sequence the constant recurrence of night and day.”
― Emile Habiby

“True power is expressed in quiet confidence; it was the sea's very calmness that epitomised its mighty force.”
― Emile Habiby

“He made me understand that there could be no release from their service until the day I died. He explained, "Your father gave it to you as his inheritance, and you will pass it onto your children. They will curse you, but our long arm will reach them nevertheless, generation after generation.”
― Emile Habiby

“While I was sat there being my usual pessoptimistic self, he was ecstatic: "Verdant fields! Green on your right and on your left; green everywhere! We have given life to what was dead. This is why we have named the borders of former Israel the Green Belt. For beyond them lie barren mountains and desert reaches, a wilderness calling out to us, "'Come you tractors of civilisation”
― Emile Habiby

“My ancestors kept on breaking their necks searching the ground at their feet for buried treasure, and I too had found what I had sought for so long by gazing above my head and discovering my brothers from outer space who had restored my calm. Why should I be expected, alone among all my fathers and grandfathers, as I sat there on that stake, to submit my fate to the laws of nature and the rules of logic?”
― Emile Habiby

“The rest - yes, that's me! The papers haven't ignored ne. How can you claim not to have heard of me? I truly am remarkable. For no paper with wide coverage, having sources, resources, advertisements, celebrity writers, and a reputation can ignore me. Those like me are everywhere - towns, villages, bars, everywhere. I am "the rest". I am remarkable indeed!”
― Emile Habiby

“But Saeed, Saeed, the children are our only hope!”
― Emile Habiby

“I don't differentiate between optimism and pessimism and am at quite a loss as to which of the two characterises me. When I awake each morning I thank the lord he did not take my soul during the night. If harm befalls me during the night, I thank him that it was no worse. So which am I, a pessimist or an optimist?”
― Emile Habiby

“Finally the true dawn emerged, splitting open the womb of the earth, and I found myself in the courtyard of the mosque, yawning and stretching my limbs”
― Emile Habiby

“When I asked my extra-terrestrial friend why he took me in, he merely replied, "What alternative did you have?”
― Emile Habiby

“Candide was an optimist, but you're a pessoptimist."
"That fact," I repsonded, "Is a virtue that, above all others, distinguishes my people."
"But you," he criticized again, "seem to be imitating Candide."
"Don't blame me for that. Blame our way of life that hasn't changed since Voltaire's day, except that El Dorado has now come to exist on this planet.”
― Emile Habiby