Naguib Mahfouz Quotes

I believe in life and in people. I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from rebellion would be a form of treason

There is no alternative to action, and that requires faith. The issue is how we are to mold for ourselves a belief system that is worthy of life.

Life…is a wonder. It is a sky laden with clouds of contradictions.

The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.

The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.

My countrymen have the right to shake my hand and talk to me if they so wish. Don't forget that their support and their reading of my works is what brought me the Nobel prize.

Love is like health. It is taken lightly when present and cherished when it departs.

An anxious heart is like a string that's out of tune.

Falseness in life is the secret that makes man's inner self a rare truth; it hides from him although it's obvious to all.

The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.

I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

He shook his head sadly. 'What a fool you are. You've wasted your ability searching for something that doesn't exist.'
'When will you realize you don't exist?

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist.

We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don't forget that our heritage includes The Thousand and One Nights.

I was afraid of marriage. I had the impression married life would take up all my time. I saw myself drowning in visits and parties. No freedom.

I've never worked in politics, never been a member of an official committee or a political party.

Watch out, brother. Turkish women end up going crazy.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

When will the state of the country be sound? ... When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity.

The real malady is fear of life, not of death

The heart is a place of secrets ...

Muhammad Iffat has an inflexible, Turkish mentality but a heart of gold.

If we reject science, we reject the common man.

I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.

Excessive concern with religion seems to me a last resort for people who have been exhausted by life.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.

It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts.

We are passing through a very sensitive time, and on the whole, this country is facing very big problems.

Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred.

A priest's life is spent between question and answer
or between a question and the attempt to answer it. The question is the summary of the spiritual life.

We wont develop until we accept that reading is a vital necessity.

Many things combine to show that Midaq Alley is one of the gems of times gone by and that it once shone forth like a flashing star in the history of Cairo. Which Cairo do I mean? That of the Fatimads, the Mamlukes, or the Sultans? Only God and the archaeologists know the answer to that, but in any case, the alley is certainly an ancient relic and a precious one. How could it be otherwise with its stone-paved surface leading directly to the historic Sanadiqiya Street. And then there is its cafe known as "Kirsha's". Its walls decorated with multicolored arabesques, now crumbling, give off strong odors from the medicines of olden times, smells which have now become the spices and folk-cures of today and tomorrow ...

Although Midaq Alley lives in almost complete isolation from all surrounding activity, it clamors with a distinctive and personal life of its own. Fundamentally and basically, its roots connect with life as a whole and yet, at the same time, it retains a number of the secrets of a world now past.

We usually exchange bare civilities at breakfast and then settle back to loathe each other cordially in silence.

As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

When disasters come at the same time, they compete with each other.

In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.

I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.

Isn't it sad that a man of no significance like this marriage clerk should impede the progress of your life? But a lowly worm eats the corpses of the most exalted individuals.

One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.

Happy is he who can give himself up.

Perhaps boredom was an irrelevant concept for a life as monotonous as hers.

You know what I'm afraid of? That God is sick of us.

But not to take a step forward is to take two steps backward", Abnum protested.

~ Before the Throne

According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

Only the poor are handicapped by honor.

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.

Take your fill, for you will not see again that which you are leaving. Every moment is the last.

Pharaoh is divinity made in flesh. The nobility are his deputies who reflect his light. How could their places be filled by a bunch of peasants, artisans and fishermen?" interjected Djoser.

"Yet they indeed take their positions," Abnum answered, "proving that they were better than those whom they replaced and that the gods embody themselves in whoever raises the standard of justices and mercy, regardless of their identities.

How to be bored while the sky is blue, and the Earth is green, and the flowers have this wonderful aroma, and the heart has this wonderful ability to love, and the soul has this infinite energy to believe. How to be bored while in this world there are those whom we love and like .and those who love us and like us

I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.

Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.

The way love can disregard fears, however, is an age-old wonder. No fear is able to spoil love's development or keep it from dreaming of its appointed hour.

Madness is the acme of intelligence.

A crazy country, choking air, polluted hearts, treachery. Treachery and treason.

I wake up early in the morning and walk for an hour. If I have something to write, I prefer to write in the morning until midday, and in the afternoon, I eat.

Just think," I say, trying to calm her down. "The two of us naked in a car, but safe and sound all the same, kissing each other to the clap of thunder and the sound of the driving rain!"
"This is impossible," she says.
"But just think. Wouldn't you like, from this snug little shelter in the midst of cosmic rage, to stick your tongue out to the entire world?

His lover appeared to have boarded the train at Auguste Comte and passed by the station of theology, where the password was 'Yes, Mother.' This train was now traversing the realm of metaphysics, where the password was 'Certainly not, Mother.' In the distance, visible through a telescope, was the mountain of reality on which was inscribed its password, 'Open your eyes and be courageous.

Don't go back over the past. Let it depart, never to return.

I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.

I now believe that people are bustards with no ethics. It would be better for them to admit it and build their communal life on that admission. The new ethical issue becomes how to maintain public welfare and human happiness in a society of bustards and scum

What a lot of graves there are laid out as far as the eye can see!. Their headstones are like hands raised in surrender, though they are beyond being threatened by anything. A city of silence and truth, where success and failure, murderer and victim come together, where thieves and policeman lie side by side in peace for the first and last time.

I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization.

Death is more merciful than hope itself! There is nothing surprising in this, for death is divinely appointed, while hope is the creation of human folly. Both end in frustration. Am I destined to lead a life of endless frustration?
-(The Beginning and the End)

Hosni Mubarak ... his constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic. We can voice our opinions now. The press is free.

Run after truth until you're breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, a hard one interspersed with drunken moments.

How could the prisoner break his chains? I pictured a world, a righteous world, with no sin, no bonds, no social obligations; a world throbbing with creativity, innovation, and thought, nothing else; a world of dedicated solitude, without father, mother, wife, or child; a world where a man could travel lightly, immersed in art alone.

If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.

Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality.

Laugh till you're exhausted.

It's clearly more important to treat one's fellow man well than to be always praying and fasting and touching one's head to a prayer mat.

Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.

What do you have to say as a devout Muslim concerning your lust for women?

No blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer

I want a world where hearts are not deceived and do not deceive others.

Without literature my life would be miserable.

We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.

Patience in the face of the bitterness of misfortune is the door to the sweetness of intimate discourse.

April. Month of dust and lies.

Sadat made us feel more secure.

Paraphrasing..Science is the language of the intellect of society. Art is language of the entire human personality.

Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.

I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees.

My wife thought I deserved it, but I always thought the Nobel a Western prize.

Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.

Every inch a person's body travels on the road of separation seems like miles to the heart.

After living for a month in his home, her character had been infected with the virus of submission to his will, which terrified everyone in the house.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

Despite dissimilarities in our luck and success at looking after ourselves, we are all human beings.