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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

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Tahar Ben Jelloun
Age: 76
Born: 1947
Born: December 1
Novelist
Poet
Psychotherapist
Writer
Fes
Morocco
Speak
Internationally
Many
Intellectuals
World
Arab
Respected
Recognized
Writers
Outside
Loved

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I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
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Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
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Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.
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Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
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In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
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Our steps invent the path as we proceed behind us they leave no trace, only the void. So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will go... -- Tahar ben Jelloun
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A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.
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At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.
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This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
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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.
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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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I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.
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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.
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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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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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My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is an important erotic element in A Thousand and One Nights, which is one of the keys to understanding the Orient.
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