Poet Quotes

Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.

Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.

The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.

Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.

Your world is as big as you make it.

Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess.

Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.

I hate a word like 'pets': it sounds so much Like something with no living of its own.

For me, poetry is always a search for order.

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

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

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

I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.

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.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.

I am a Moroccan writer of French expression.

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.

Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.

Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

Be vigilant, for nothing one achieves lasts forever.

A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.