Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.

Patience and time do more than strength or passion.

The Odyssey is the story of someone who, in the course of diverse experiences, acquires a personality or affirms and recovers his personality.

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.

Good talkers are only found in Paris.

He who would tell divers tales must know how to vary the tune.

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

The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself.

There is no road of flowers leading to glory.

A very great Iliad… concerns the creation of a nation.

I don’t feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.

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.

I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them...

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish

There have been only rare moments in history where individual histories were able to run their course without wars or revolutions.

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.

My days are gone a-wandering.

I love no woman, for love is a serious business, not a jest.

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

The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.

A hungry stomach cannot hear.

After the magical act accomplished by Joyce with Ulysses, perhaps we are getting away from it.

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.

What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.

It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.

Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred.

We have gotten away from this double aspect of either putting the character back into historical events or of making a historical event of his very life.

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

But where are the snows of yester year?

If one of two lovers is loyal, and the other jealous and false, how may their friendship last, for Love is slain!

Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.

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.

Dressed in the lion’s skin, the ass spread terror far and wide.

All confessions are Odysseys.

I liked Sartre’s views but not his writing.

Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.

When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn’t interested any longer. That’s very astonishing.

My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.

It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Now will I rehearse before you a very ancient Breton Lay. As the tale was told to me, so, in turn, will I tell it over again, to the best of my art and knowledge....

Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.

The strongest passion is fear.

All societies are historical.

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

Let us dream that once upon a time have lived men stronger and greater, who were more determined for good or for evil; that does us good.

The function of genius is to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years later.

Ulysses finds himself unchanged, aside from his experience, at the end of his odyssey.

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