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"My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own."
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"Stories are like children. They grow in their own way."
"We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading."
"A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images."
"She found as always that words on paper proved themselves, they were so beautifully true."
"Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world."
"Books. It's always easier to tell people that a character is funny rather than attempt to hit the punchline of a joke that character would've said. But if we all simply told, books would cease to exist. And so would empathy. And feeling."
"My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out."
"They say Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I have never led an army, I am a wanderer. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer's 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman."
"Shakespeare shook his head and sunk his chin into his ruff, making him look more owl-like than ever. "I have written about other worlds often enough. I have said what I can say. There are many kinds of reality. This is but one kind."
"Pages entertain me more than pictures do."
Explore more quotes by Tahar Ben Jelloun
"An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused."
"I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity."
"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."
"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."
"It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn."
"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."
"At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets."
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