Tahar Ben Jelloun Quotes
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I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.
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Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.
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The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.
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There is an important erotic element in A Thousand and One Nights, which is one of the keys to understanding the Orient.
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An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.
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In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
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I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
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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.
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My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.
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In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.
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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.
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Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
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I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.
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Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
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I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.
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The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.
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Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
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My hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave.
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Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.
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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.
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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.
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What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
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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.
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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.