What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.

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

At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.

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.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other; it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.

A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.

I am glad to have found a readership, but one can’t write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper. A writer creates an imaginary world that he transmits to others.