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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. "

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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" 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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" 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 The World

" 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. "

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" 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. "

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

" In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away. "

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" 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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" I am a Moroccan writer of French expression. "

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" 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

" 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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" 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. "

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings. "

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

" 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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun