Tahar Ben Jelloun Quotes

I have written about the dispossessed, immigrants, the condition of women who do not enjoy the same legal rights as men, the Palestinians who are deprived of their land and condemned to exile.

New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate.

Did my father talk to me? It's true, he didn't say a lot to me, but I knew what had to be done. No need for big speeches. He taught me the fundamentals of our religion: My son, Islam is simple: you are alone responsible for yourself before God, so if you are good, you will find goodness in the afterlife, and if you are bad, you'll find that instead. There's no mystery: everything depends on how you treat people, especially the weak, the poor, so Islam, that means you pray, you address the Creator and don't do evil around you, don't lie, don't steal, don't betray your wife or your country, don't kill- but do I really need to remind you of this?

This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.

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.

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

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

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.

I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.

Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.

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.

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.

We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.

The power of the word in Morocco belonged to men and to the authorities. No one asked the point of view of poor people or women.

It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.

I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.

For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.

Outside, not only over our pit but above all far away from it, there was life. You could not think too much about it, but I liked to imagine it so as not to die of forgetfulness. Imagine, and not remember. Life, the real one, not that dirty rag blowing across the ground, no, life in its exquisite beauty. I mean in its simplicity, its marvelous banality: a child smiling after tears; eyes blinking in too bright light; a woman trying on a dress; a man asleep on the grass. A horse galloping across a plain. A man wearing many-colored wings attempting to fly. A tree bending to shade a woman sitting on a stone. The sun drifts off, and you even see a rainbow. Life: it's being able to raise your arm, rub the back of your neck, stretch for the pure pleasure of it, get up and stroll aimlessly, watch people go by, stop, read a newspaper - or simply stay sitting at your window because you have nothing to do and it's nice to do nothing.

Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors.

Don't worry, life is good despite everything!

I do not question anyone anymore. I drink coffee and I live.

Intellectuals try to keep going. But their situation is very difficult. Those who have had the courage to voice their opposition have often paid a very high price.

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

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

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

I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.

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

For a long time I searched for the black stone that cleanses the soul of death.

Our first love is always our last.

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.

We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.

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

There is a gulf between the Arab peoples and Arab intellectuals.

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.

My hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave.

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