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.

My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.

I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.

In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.

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

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.