Man is more noble dead than alive, because in returning to the earth he becomes earth, and nothing is nobler than the earth that entombs us, closes our eyes, and blossoms in a beautiful eterneity.

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

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.

I have at least the whole of my life to answer a question: Who am I? And who is the other? A gust of wind at dawn? A motionless landscape? A trembling leaf? A coil of white smoke above a mountain? I write all these words and I hear the wind, not outside, but inside my head. A strong wind, it rattles the shutters through which I enter the dream.

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.

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.