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 time.

I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.

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?

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

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 time.

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

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 change literature as we know it. I thought I'd have men lining up at my door wanting to be my boyfriend. But later I discovered that no one read the book. Or no one cared. Right now, I have only one book translated into Arabic. Someday, maybe if the Syrian regime falls, there will be others, but probably another regime will come into power and it will employ just as much censorship.