»What would you do in such a world? I read Dostoyevsky, of course. I read all his novels, one after another, and then reread them. He made me feel supersmart. That was his great talent, making teenage boys feel righteous. At that age, and only at that age, I considered his philosophical questions to be deep and poignant, and the fact that I understood them meant I was superior to everyone. Please remember that my brother’s greatest intellectual achievement during those years was turning up his shirt collar in the back. My father congratulated him for thinking of such a brilliant thing. So of course I felt superior and that feeling was almost superior to jerking off.«

– Rabih Alameddine: The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother). – New York : Grove Press, 2025. – ISBN 978-0-8021-6647-0. – Seite 264