Naguib Mahfouz Quotes

If life has no meaning, why don't we create a meaning for it?

Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.

I am practically in the employ of Mr. Nobel. I have to meet everyone he sends my way.

Without literature my life would be miserable.

Insults are the business of the court.

My countrymen have the right to shake my hand and talk to me if they so wish. Don't forget that their support and their reading of my works is what brought me the Nobel prize.

The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.

I believe in life and in people. I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from rebellion would be a form of treason

At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.

Visit me once each year, for it's wrong to abandon people forever.

I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

I consider Khomeini's position dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment-that is not the Islamic way.

If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.

Happy is he who can give himself up.

I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.

It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts.

The real malady is fear of life, not of death

In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.

My wife thought I deserved it, but I always thought the Nobel a Western prize.

Excessive concern with religion seems to me a last resort for people who have been exhausted by life.

The heart is a place of secrets.

If we reject science, we reject the common man.

Hosni Mubarak... his constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic. We can voice our opinions now. The press is free.

Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.

We are passing through a very sensitive time, and on the whole, this country is facing very big problems.

The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.

He seemed to be waiting for a miracle to save him from the depths his life had reached and take him to a land of dreams.

I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.

As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.

God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

I thought they would never select an Eastern writer for the Nobel. I was surprised.

I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.

Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred.

If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.

Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

It's clearly more important to treat one's fellow man well than to be always praying and fasting and touching one's head to a prayer mat.

We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

I accepted the interviews and encounters that had to be held with the media, but I would have preferred to work in peace.

As for life's tragedies, our love will defeat them. Love is the most effective cure. In the crevices of disasters, happiness lies like a diamond in a mind, so let us instill in ourselves the wisdom of love.

Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.