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" I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Prayer
Others
Night
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" 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. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Women
Enjoy
Immigrants
" 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. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Change
Change The World
Poetry
" It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Our
Turn
Own
" I liked Sartre's views but not his writing. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Sartre
His
Writing
" My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Sensibility
Who
Toward
" 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
Power
People
Men
" My hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Hope
Create
Investment
" The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Healthy
Knowledge
World
" 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
Voice
Situation
Keep Going
" In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Possible
See
Time
" Beauty is first and foremost an emotion. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Beauty
Foremost
First
" 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
People
Day
Every Day
" I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Thought
Security
Sexuality
" 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. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Chosen
World
Vision
" There is a gulf between the Arab peoples and Arab intellectuals. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Arab
Gulf
Between
" I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Love
Life
Mars
" Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Lasts
Forever
Nothing
" I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Myself
I Feel
I Am
" The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Human
Errors
Religions
" 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. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Speak
World
Out
" 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
Habits
Creating
Thinking
" I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Language
Parents
Different
" Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Politics
Stay
Religion
" 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. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Born
Same
Language
" This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Universe
Well
Words
" 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
Stop
Must
Posing
" 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. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Alone
Work
Stand
" For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Me
History
Situation
" An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused. "
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Voice
Individual
Heard
" 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
World
War
Petty