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" There are very few great poets in the world. "

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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" 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. "

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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. "

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" 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. "

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

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

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" 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. "

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

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

" 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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

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. "

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

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" 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

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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

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

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

" 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

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

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

" 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

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

Tahar Ben Jelloun