There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see.
The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.
If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.
I wake up early in the morning and walk for an hour. If I have something to write, I prefer to write in the morning until midday, and in the afternoon, I eat.
We are passing through a very sensitive time, and on the whole, this country is facing very big problems.
Without literature my life would be miserable.
If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.
God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.
I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees.
I reject any path which rejects life, but I can’t help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.
We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don’t forget that our heritage includes The Thousand and One Nights.
One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.
I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
I was afraid of marriage. I had the impression married life would take up all my time. I saw myself drowning in visits and parties. No freedom.
Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought.
I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization.
The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.
The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.
If we reject science, we reject the common man.
I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.