Quotes By Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.

An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.

New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate.

In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.

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.

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

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.

In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds.

It is impossible to disregard such an important medium as television. We should know how to use it, learn to work in it and express new values in it.

A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.

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

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

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

My hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

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.

We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.