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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

In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Time

I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.

I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.

I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Night

Prayer

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

I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Writing

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.

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

Work

I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

People

Language

In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

I am a Moroccan writer of French expression.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Expression

Writer

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.

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