But the shortest works are always the best.

The Iliad is the private lives of people thrown into disorder by history.

In the ’70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they’d take my passport away.

Naturally I drew register a little exaggerated, in order to create something new in the sense of a sublime literature that sings of despair only in order to oppress the reader, and make him desire...

For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint.

At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.

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.

Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.

In the Odyssey, there are technical refinements which are extremely remarkable, and I’m surprised they aren’t mentioned more often.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

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.

Be advised that all flatterers live at the expense of those who listen to them.

The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side.

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.

Poetry must be made by all and not by one.

Great were the lamentation and the cry when the news of this mischance was noised about the city. Such a tumult of mourning was never before heard, for the whole city was moved.

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.

Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.

There is nothing useless to men of sense.

One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.

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.

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...

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.