So many people and institutions are against homosexuals that, as a homosexual, you can't waste your time by trying to convince them that you're a good person.

My family spent many years sleeping side by side in the same room. It's important for me to not separate myself from them or to say that I've suffered more than they have because I'm gay. We all suffered from the same political rejection, and from poverty. When you're starving with eleven other people in the same room, you become connected to them forever. We were all hungry at the same time.

I hate to express political ideas directly in a book. I don't want my books to be seen as an expression of this or that political idea. At the same time I want to show a kind of rebellion and transgression, something further.

So many people and institutions are against homosexuals that, as a homosexual, you can't waste your time by trying to convince them that you're a good person.

Everyone hasn't got the power to free oneself and go away to another place or country... No one is capable of freeing oneself from society.

Any gay person understands at some point that he or she has to disappear, to become invisible. That's very difficult. You somehow have to kill yourself. This is asked of people who haven't got the tools to understand that it's all a social construction, and that they shouldn't inferiorize themselves. This is asked of little kids. But I still live in the same outcome.

Many Europeans think that all Moroccans speak French, but no. I had to make an effort to learn it when I studied French literature at the university in Rabat.