Quotes By 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.

To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.

I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.

I am a Moroccan writer of French expression.

Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.

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

I have written about the dispossessed, immigrants, the condition of women who do not enjoy the same legal rights as men, the Palestinians who are deprived of their land and condemned to exile.

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

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

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

I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.

We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.

It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.

At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.

The power of the word in Morocco belonged to men and to the authorities. No one asked the point of view of poor people or women.

I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.

We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.

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

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.

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

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.

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

There are very few great poets in the world.

Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.

This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.

I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.

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

Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.

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.