In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away. — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“A novel related in a dungeon, in the presence of death, cannot have the same meaning, the same consequences, as it would when read… — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue. — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself. — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context. — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers. — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl. — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
Our steps invent the path as we proceed; behind us they leave no trace, only the void. So we shall always look ahead and… — Tahar Ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
“Man is more noble dead than alive, because in returning to the earth he becomes earth, and nothing is nobler than the earth that… — Tahar ben Jelloun Copy Share Image
