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But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.

I don't know Arabic. I can't speak or write it.

Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.

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.

Arabs respect only the language of force.

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

My use of language is part and parcel of my message.

As teenagers, a lot of us just did not want much to do with Arabic culture - we looked to the West.

Whenever I come across an Arabic word mired in English text, I am momentarily shocked out of the narrative.