Tahar Ben Jelloun's Quotes

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.

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

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

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

My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.

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

The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself.

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.

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

There are very few great poets in the world.

There is a gulf between the Arab peoples and Arab intellectuals.

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

To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 other side.

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.

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

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

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.