Zitat des Tages von Tahar Ben Jelloun:
I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.
Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.
For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.
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.
Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
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.
The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.
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.
What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.
To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.
In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.
My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.
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 hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave.
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.
This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.
In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
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.
There are very few great poets in the world.
I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.
I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
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.
A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.
I am a Moroccan writer of French expression.
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.
My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.
Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.
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.
Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.
Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.
I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.
I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.