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.
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.
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.
At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.
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.
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.
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.
I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds.
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.
This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
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.
I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.
It is impossible to disregard such an important medium as television. We should know how to use it, learn to work in it and express new values in it.
I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.
To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.
I am a Moroccan writer of French expression.
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.
Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
In the 70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.
