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

In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

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.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

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

There is a gulf between the Arab peoples and Arab intellectuals.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.

- 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

The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

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.

- Tahar Ben Jelloun