Tahar Ben Jelloun Quotes

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.

Man is more noble dead than alive, because in returning to the earth he becomes earth, and nothing is nobler than the earth that entombs us, closes our eyes, and blossoms in a beautiful eterneity.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

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.

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 comp...

But you'll see, you can feel time on the wind it whips up as it passes. We don't worry about time or the wind. Nothing can touch us any more. As long as people remember us, we are here. Anyway, it's t...

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

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

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 dialogue with the oth...

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

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

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.

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

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.