Tahar Ben Jelloun Quotes
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Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
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I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.
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In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
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It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.
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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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I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.
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Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
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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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For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.
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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.
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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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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.
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This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
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Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.
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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.
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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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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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I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.
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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.
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A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.
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Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
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To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.
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Most of those who died did not die of hunger but of hatred. Feeling hatred diminishes you. It eats at your from within and attacks the immune system. When you have hatred inside you, it always crushes you in the end.
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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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Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.
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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.
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Our steps invent the path as we proceed; behind us they leave no trace, only the void. So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will go... -- Tahar ben Jelloun
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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.
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Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.
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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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