Madness is the acme of intelligence.
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.
Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.
You know what I’m afraid of? That God is sick of us.
As for life’s tragedies, our love will defeat them. Love is the most effective cure. In the crevices of disasters, happiness lies like a diamond in a mind, so let us instill in ourselves the wisdom of love.
Visit me once each year, for it’s wrong to abandon people forever.
I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.
Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.
I believe in life and in people. I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from rebellion would be a form of treason.
I defend both the freedom of expression and society’s right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.
The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.
Happy is he who can give himself up.
According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.
The real malady is fear of life, not of death.
At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.
I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it’s because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.
The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.
Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.
If life has no meaning, why don’t we create a meaning for it?