Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist.
We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.
The heart is a place of secrets...
He seemed to be waiting for a miracle to save him from the depths his life had reached and take him to a land of dreams.
Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality.
It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts.
Excessive concern with religion seems to me a last resort for people who have been exhausted by life.
Only the poor are handicapped by honor.
Today’s interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.
An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.
Insults are the business of the court.
The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.
Events at home, at work, in the street – these are the bases for a story.
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.