God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.

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

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

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

Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality.

The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.

At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.