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.

I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.

Emigration is no longer a solution; it's a defeat. People are risking death, drowning every day, but they're knocking on doors that are not open.

Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.

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

The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.

I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.