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

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

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 fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?

The eye always fills in the imperfections.

I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.

I need to have one foot inside and one foot outside a culture to be able to write about it. For example, I couldn't write about the gay culture if I were wholly inside or outside of it. Finding that distance is always interesting. I jokingly say that when I'm in America, I write about Beirut, and when I'm in Beirut, I write about America. A lot of my friends in Beirut think I'm more American than Lebanese. Here, my friends think of me more as Lebanese.

For someone like me and my generation, you had to speak French to be sophisticated, you had to be lighter-skinned.