Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.

We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.

When I am in Egypt, I am phoned because I am listed in the medical directory under "Mental Health and Psychiatry." And of course, I see very few people, because I give much more time to writing. So I cannot say that I really stopped medicine, but I practice medicine - or psychiatry - in a very different way. In an artistic way!

Memory is never complete. There are always parts of it that time has amputated. Writing is a way of retrieving them, of bringing the missing parts back to it, of making it more holistic.

Many people come here and they think my apartment is a poor relative to my name. But you cannot be radical and have money, it’s impossible.

In history, the millions win; that is democracy.

Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.