A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.
Adonis has brought new life to Arabic, but in a way which does not seem to me entirely successful. His poetry is highly technical, highly cerebral.
An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.
Arab publishing is in such a mess today. I haven't found my public in the Arab world. Piracy or unauthorized reproduction is doing terrible harm.
Artists can do their own thing, try to satisfy themselves without bothering whether their countrymen understand them or not.
At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.
Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.
Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.
Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
Egypt is steeped in history, and because its experience of modern democracy goes back to 1923, Egypt has a head start.
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.
For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.
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 am a Moroccan writer of French expression.
I am a Moroccan, an Arab. My culture is Arab, Islamic, but it was in French, the language of the former colonial power, that I expressed myself when I began to write.
I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
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.
I developed the main themes of solitude and anguish.
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.
I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.
I give this rather Cartesian language another feel, another memory. I introduce it into a world to which it could never otherwise have been admitted.
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.
I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.
I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.
I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.
I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.
If the circumstances are propitious, writers, painters, sculptors and poets can make an impact. But they cannot reach the masses, above all the peasants.
If you send a French sociologist, researcher or journalist to Morocco, he will not see the kind of things that I see as a result of my deep involvement as an Arab and a Moroccan.
In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
In our societies, when a person expresses disagreement with the general consensus, that person is rejected.
In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.
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.
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.
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.
It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.
It's a book without concessions. I wrote it feverishly, bewitched by it, surprising myself with an inner strength.
Mahmoud Darwish is only known in Europe to supporters of the Palestinian cause, and not even to all of them.
Most Arab intellectuals worth their salt have no option but to get quietly on with their work, far from the limelight.
My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.
My hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave.
My mother was illiterate. My father knew how to read but was a shopkeeper. We had a very modest life, with no music or books, except for the Koran.
My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.
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.
One must write, even and above all if human beings are not particularly good or decent.
People in the Arab world do not understand that a writer or a filmmaker explores his subjectivity and expresses it in public.
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.
Perhaps we have not yet reached the bottom of the pit.
Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
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.
Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.
Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
The individual is not really, fully recognized. What is recognized is what lies behind the individual: the clan, the family, the tribe, the district or the village.
The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself.
The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.
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.
The question is, what are you ready to do to overcome poverty?
The rest of the world only seems to have become aware of the existence of Naguib Mahfouz since he won the Nobel Prize two years ago.
The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.
The wounds of migration hit me in the face: men were psychologically destroyed.
There are very few great poets in the world.
There is a gulf between the Arab peoples and Arab intellectuals.
There isn't enough information, and no attempt is made to encourage people to know what's going on. But there is always rumour, the weapon of the poor.
This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
Those who read me in French are more numerous, perhaps because they want to go to the original.
To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.
Until very recently there were three powerful dictatorships in Europe: Spain, Portugal and Greece. The future for these countries seemed totally blocked, and yet they have been reborn.
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.
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.
We have to talk in terms of making a clean break. We must do this to shock people and make them think. Later we must try to look for common ground.
We must have our say, not through violence, aggression or fear. We must speak out calmly and forcefully. We shall only be able to enter the new world era if we agree to engage in dialogue with the other side.
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.
We should cite particular breakthroughs in other Arab countries. But what is certain is that a long road lies ahead.
What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
What is published in the Arab world is not always subjected to serious standards of criticism. Vast quantities of stuff get into print. There is a confusion which reflects a general situation.
Writing and publishing in France has enabled me to communicate with a wide public, even in the Maghreb. This public reads me just as well in French as in Arabic.
Has supported Lionel Jospin's 2002 French presidential campaign.
Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2000.
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