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

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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Tahar Ben Jelloun
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: December 1
Novelist
Poet
Psychotherapist
Writer
Fes
Morocco
Injustice
Army
Students
Real
Would
Repression
Bullets
Shoot
Discovered

More quotes by Tahar Ben Jelloun

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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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I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
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In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
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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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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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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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Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
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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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Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
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I am a Moroccan writer of French expression.
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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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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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I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
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Most of those who died did not die of hunger but of hatred. Feeling hatred diminishes you. It eats at your from within and attacks the immune system. When you have hatred inside you, it always crushes you in the end.
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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
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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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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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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
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Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
Tahar Ben Jelloun