People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.

There is an important erotic element in A Thousand and One Nights, which is one of the keys to understanding the Orient.

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.

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.

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

An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.

Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.