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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**********************************
There is a type of Armenian
who uses his love of Mt. Ararat
as a license to hate his fellow Armenians.
*
When after countless book reviews, translations,
commentaries, and interviews to our newspapers
I raised the question of compensation,
I was told “We don’t have the money.”
That’s when I understood why
Armenians prefer dead writers to living ones.
The dead don’t make any demands.
*
We have two of everything –
churches, bishops, schools, newspapers,
editors, printers and so on –
but not even minimum wage for writers.
This may explain why even they
have a Nobel-Prize winner…
*
In the eyes of our dividers,
divisions are more important than God.
*
If I have survived so far
it’s not because I deserve to live
but because I am almost inaccessible:
I live in the middle of nowhere
with a quasi-Siberian climate.
*
Orson Welles’s favorite insult
that could be taken as a compliment:
“You’ve done it again.”
#
I was the most disappointed man on earth
when I met my first Turk.
He was short, skinny, and timid.
No fez. No yataghan. No shalvars. No bloodshot eyes.
It is not at all
unusual for a speechifier or
sermonizer to end up believing
in his own lies, especially if these
lies have also been his
main source of income and
prestige.
Q/A
********************
Q: What’s right and what’s wrong with Armenians?
A: Right, nothing, wrong, everything.
*
Q: Are you a pessimist or an optimist?
A: I write, therefore I am an optimist.
*
Q: You speak of corrupt and incompetent leaders:
Who are they?
A: Your question implies, if they exist,
they must be faceless, anonymous nonentities.
#
ON UNDERSTANDING
**********************************
The complexities of reality are such that
even when we think we understand,
we don’t understand.
*
The greater the thinker,
the greater the number of his
critics, adversaries, and enemies.
And here I could make a long list of philosophers,
who were condemned to death,
crucified, excommunicated, assassinated,
exiled, and jailed.
*
ON COMMON SENSE
****************************
It must be just about the least common
of all faculties. What makes perfect sense
on this side of the river may
be a capital offense on the other.
#
There is nothing wrong with patriotism provided you keep in mind your enemy too has been brainwashed to believe there is nothing wrong in killing you in the name of God and Country.
#
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