Quotes by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Emigration is no longer a solution; its a defeat. People are risking death, drowning every day, but theyre knocking on doors that are not open.

The power of the word in Morocco belonged to men and to the authorities. No one asked the point of view of poor people or women.

Intellectuals try to keep going. But their situation is very difficult. Those who have had the courage to voice their opposition have often paid a very high price.

Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.

I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.

Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.

For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.

I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know thats not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

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.