Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.

In my prayers, I want to say: Lord, don’t be far from me, and also don’t come too close. Let me contemplate the stars on the texture of your cloth, but don’t unveil your face to me. Allow me to hear the rivers that you send running, but Lord! Lord! Don’t allow me hearing your voice

I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road... all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them.

The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity.

You can't say history teaches us this or that; it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question.

Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices