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. — 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
