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.

Better a living beggar than a buried emperor.

Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name.

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

There are very few great poets in the world.

People must help one another; it is nature’s law.

Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.

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

The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.

Whosoever counts these Lays as fable, may be assured that I am not of his mind.

It doesn’t seem to me that anyone has discovered much that’s new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.

My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.

Help thyself and Heaven will help thee.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

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.

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

People who make no noise are dangerous.

It is the creator of fiction’s point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history.

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

Casey was the better team and the better team won.

But sweetly and discreetly love passes from person to person, from heart to heart, or it is nothing worth.

To have one’s own story told by a third party who doesn’t know that the character in question is himself the hero of the story being told, that’s a technical refinement.

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 bend and do not break.

There are divers men who make a great show of loyalty, and pretend to such discretion in the hidden things they hear, that at the end folk come to put faith in them.

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

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

Never sell the bear’s skin before one has killed the beast.

It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein.

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

I will leave no memoirs.

Fairest and dearest, your wrath and anger are more heavy than I can bear; but learn that I cannot tell what you wish me to say without sinning against my honour too grievously.

We think of giving importance to history, but it is the individual who is interesting, and we want to give him a historical importance.

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,...

It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

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.

To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.

By the work one knows the workman.

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.

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

Arithmetic! Algebra! Geometry! Grandiose trinity! Luminous triangle! Whoever has not known you is without sense!

For above all things Love means sweetness, and truth, and measure; yea, loyalty to the loved one and to your word. And because of this I dare not meddle with so high a matter.

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

Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.

A man who is “of sound mind” is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.