Tahar Ben Jelloun Quotes

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Tahar Ben Jelloun

Profession : Poet

Birth : December 1, 1944

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.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun