Top 90 Tahar Quotes
#1. Our steps invent the path as we proceed; behind us they leave no trace, only the void. So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will go ...
Tahar ben Jelloun
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#2. The mud is cold when you're in the north of Scotland!
Tahar Rahim
#3. I recall the first time my agent told me to wear clothes specifically chosen for me, I would try and find excuses not to do it.
Tahar Rahim
#4. Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#5. Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#6. 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
#7. For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#8. For a long time I searched for the black stone that cleanses the soul of death.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#9. The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#10. We must have our say, not through violence, aggression or fear. We must speak out calmly and forcefully. We shall only be able to enter the new world era if we agree to engage in dialogue with the other side.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#11. 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.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#12. We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#13. Some kids go walking in the mountains, but I just went to the cinema. So when I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, even though this wasn't normal for Arab kids or anyone in the town, they were sort of expecting it and were very supportive.
Tahar Rahim
#14. I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#15. 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.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#16. We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#17. My hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#18. I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#19. To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#20. I've always refused to play terrorists.
Tahar Rahim
#21. It's not about 'succeeding,' but sometimes on a film, you know you've captured something.
Tahar Rahim
#22. With 'Eagle of the Ninth,' every shot was extremely planned and organized. The director was like, 'Do this!' And I say, 'How was it?' and he says, 'Good.' It was very odd. I would never know where he was headed, or even if he was shooting me at a close-up or from a distance.
Tahar Rahim
#23. It is impossible to disregard such an important medium as television. We should know how to use it, learn to work in it and express new values in it.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#24. I knew I'd have to go to Paris eventually, and I didn't want to be the provincial kid who just turns up and says, 'I want to act.'
Tahar Rahim
#25. I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#26. A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#27. I like films to be pure cinema, but I also like them to provide a snapshot of a family, a society or a character - something that can nourish you as a human being as well as an actor.
Tahar Rahim
#28. 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.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#29. I learned to walk on my own legs, to dive so deeply into a role to forget that I'm acting.
Tahar Rahim
#30. The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#31. I'm an actor, full stop. Not an Arab actor. Not an actor of Algerian origin. Just an actor.
Tahar Rahim
#35. We need prisons because there are some hardcore criminals, but I never met a guy who has been in jail that came out with a smile on his face thinking, 'Right, that's it - now I am going to be good!'
Tahar Rahim
#36. I don't want to say, 'I want to be in Hollywood,' like so many actors do, but I know that Hollywood is still making good movies, and I'd like to be part of that someday.
Tahar Rahim
#38. New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#40. I am glad to have found a readership, but one can't write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper. A writer creates an imaginary world that he transmits to others.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#41. I don't spend much time on Twitter. I joined because I found it funny.
Tahar Rahim
#42. But you'll see, you can feel time on the wind it whips up as it passes. We don't worry about time or the wind. Nothing can touch us any more. As long as people remember us, we are here. Anyway, it's the wind that tells us, lets us know about the thigs we've left behind.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#43. Emigration is no longer a solution; it's a defeat. People are risking death, drowning every day, but they're knocking on doors that are not open.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#44. My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#45. In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#46. When you agree to work with a filmmaker, it's important that you accept their world. It's an adventure. I like that. I throw myself into the director's arms, into their universe.
Tahar Rahim
#48. I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#49. We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#50. There is an important erotic element in A Thousand and One Nights, which is one of the keys to understanding the Orient.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#51. I'm looking for challenges, and as always, what matters is the script, the character and the director.
Tahar Rahim
#52. At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#53. Thanks to 'A Prophet,' I'm known in a lot of countries.
Tahar Rahim
#54. My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#55. I simply can't wear an outfit if I don't feel that is right for me.
Tahar Rahim
#56. 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.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#57. I'd rather have one good scene in a movie by a great director than a small role in a mediocre movie.
Tahar Rahim
#58. There is a gulf between the Arab peoples and Arab intellectuals.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#59. If I don't love my character, I can't do it.
Tahar Rahim
#60. I sometimes feel that racism is getting worse.
Tahar Rahim
#61. At the end of the day, I remain a country boy inside.
Tahar Rahim
#63. What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#64. 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.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#65. A novel related in a dungeon, in the presence of death, cannot have the same meaning, the same consequences, as it would when read on the beach or in a meadow, in the shade of cherry trees.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#66. 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
#67. In my town, and especially in my area, there were people from everywhere: Algerians, Senegalese, French people, Asians, all kinds of immigrants and natives, and everyone circulated.
Tahar Rahim
#68. This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#69. The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors and fanaticism of human beings.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#70. 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
#71. People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#72. Silence is death. If you speak, you die. If you are silent, you die. So speak, and die.
Tahar Djaout
#73. But bad manners or vulgar gestures can sometimes have a touch of poetry about them, just enough not to arouse one's indignation.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#74. Silence is death, and you, if you talk, you die, and if you remain silent, you die. So, speak out and die.
Tahar Djaout
#75. Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#76. We're seeing TV series that are as good as movies were in the '70s and '80s - shows like 'The Wire,' 'The Sopranos' and 'Breaking Bad.'
Tahar Rahim
#77. What is art? Art talks about life; it's subversive.
Tahar Rahim
#78. Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#80. Happy people have neither age nor memory, they have no need of the past.
Tahar Djaout
#81. I love fashion as an art; I love fashion as costume, as a character. I don't like dictates and the phoniness of appearance.
Tahar Rahim
#82. 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.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#83. In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#84. I don't know how to get bored. I need to learn to rest.
Tahar Rahim
#85. It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#86. I am glad I have found a readership, but one can't write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#87. An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#88. Everybody is not completely traumatised by their life.
Tahar Rahim
#90. Most of those who died did not die of hunger but of hatred. Feeling hatred diminishes you. It eats at your from within and attacks the immune system. When you have hatred inside you, it always crushes you in the end.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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