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

Only the poor are handicapped by honor.

I've never worked in politics, never been a member of an official committee or a political party.

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

Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.

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.

When you spend time with your friends, what do you talk about? Those things which made an impression on you that day, that week ... I write stories the same way. Events at home, in school, at work, in the street, these are the bases for a story. Some experiences leave such a deep impression that instead of talking about them at the club I work them into a novel.