Tahar Ben Jelloun

“People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.”

“What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.”

“Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.”

“I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.”

“I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.”

“We must have our say, not through violence, aggression or fear. We must speak out calmly and forcefully. We shall only be able to enter the new world era if we agree to engage in dialogue with the other side.”

“There is a gulf between the Arab peoples and Arab intellectuals.”

“Emigration is no longer a solution; it's a defeat. People are risking death, drowning every day, but they're knocking on doors that are not open.”

“I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.”

“Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other; it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.”

“Intellectuals try to keep going. But their situation is very difficult. Those who have had the courage to voice their opposition have often paid a very high price.”

“For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.”

“The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.”

“My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.”

“Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.”

“I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.”

“I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.”

“The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself.”

“The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.”

“Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.”