Losing hope means ceasing to love my son and my girlfriend and many friends and people around the world.

You learn something from the classics but your feelings and your imagination operate in the domain of the colloquial. We need to think seriously about reforming the Arabic that we use today.

I'm not much interested in prizes, whether from the Arab world or from the Western world. Writing is a very difficult process and I want to continue my work.

In fact I didn't think about fear much at the time. I felt angry about everything that was happening around me: the violence of the dictatorship and the violence of society.

I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films.

We in Iraq have not descended from another planet. Just as people in many other countries have gotten over the tragedy of war, Iraq will get over its ordeal.

My stories were translated and had many reviews before I had an interview with any international or Arab newspaper. If the stories hadn't succeeded, you wouldn't have asked me my position on Arab festivals and I wouldn't have been interested in the festivals anyway, because I would be in seclusion, writing.