Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.

For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.

Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.

Our steps invent the path as we proceed; behind us they leave no trace, only the void. So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will go... -- Tahar ben Jelloun

Most of those who died did not die of hunger but of hatred. Feeling hatred diminishes you. It eats at your from within and attacks the immune system. When you have hatred inside you, it always crushes you in the end.

In the 70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.