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The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.


Naguib Mahfouz

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Madness is the acme of intelligence.
نجيب محفوظ April. Month of dust and lies.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his quest...
NAGUIB Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not u...
JULIAN BAGGINI If a writer is to tell his own story - tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people ...
ORHAN PAMUK He's a great writer, but he's also the first writer-celebrity. His story as an expatriate and as an ...
JAMES CARROLL A writer is lost when he grows interested in such questions as 'what is art?' and 'what is an artist...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Here in Manto's own words that he wanted to mark his grave with:

"In the name of God, the...
SAADAT HASAN MANTO It's not a story about a man who has a crisis of faith or doubts his faith. He doubts a lot of thing...
JACK KENNY The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts and questions, while fools are so certai...
SHANNON L. ALDER The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ My wife thought I deserved it, but I always thought the Nobel a Western prize.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that s...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothin...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I wake up early in the morning and walk for an hour. If I have something to write, I prefer to write...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between rep...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beauti...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don't forget that our herit...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people a...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I ad...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the d...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ In Egypt today most people are concerned with getting bread to eat. Only some of the educated unders...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Without literature my life would be miserable.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ It's clearly more important to treat one's fellow man well than to be always praying and fas...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ If we reject science, we reject the common man.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his quest...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I have condemned Khomeini's fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie as a breach of international relations and ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ When will the state of the country be sound?... When its people believe that the end result of cowar...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ The real malady is fear of life, not of death.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his que...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his quest...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part o...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been trans...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ We are passing through a very sensitive time, and on the whole, this country is facing very big prob...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ الدنيا من غير طلعة محياها لا تساوي ذره من رماد
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I consider Khomeini's position dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment-that is no...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Happy is he who can give himself up.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ No blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Hosni Mubarak... his constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic. We can voice our opinions...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our fi...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ إن بلادنا في حاجة إلى جرعات قوية من قلة الأدب حيال المل�...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ He knew Muhammad Iffat was of Turkish descent and stubborn as a mule.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Muhammad Iffat has an inflexible, Turkish mentality but a heart of gold.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Home is not where you are born;
home is where all your attempts
to escape cease
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ ...love is like health. It is taken lightly when present and cherished when it departs.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ An anxious heart is like a string that's out of tune.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ الحــب : لعله جنون أو مرض، ولكنه على أي حال يمثل السعادة...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Laugh till you're exhausted.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ -إنها قسمة عادلة ، فالثراء للأقوياء و الأخلاق للضعفاء
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ عجيبة هذه السلطنة بناسها وعفاريتها..ترفع شعار الله وتغ�...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ سألت الشيخ عبد ربه التائه.
- متى يصلح حال البلد؟
ف...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because i...
LEO STEIN The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because ...
LEO STEIN I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES What is the greatest reward a writer can have? Isn't it that day when someone rushes up to you, his ...
RAY BRADBURY Christianity is a life, not a doctrine . . . I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave y...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He ...
GORE VIDAL A writer may not know the way at first; but if he endeavors to complete his task, he carves a path w...
SUSAN J. MCINTIRE Art's power of persuasion resides in the small personal details of one's own story, and if i...
PHILIP SCHULTZ The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infe...
ARTHUR ERICKSON That did happen. He may have made a connection with Perry, but Truman was ultimately a writer. A wri...
GERALD CLARKE Every skilled person is to be believed with reference to his own art.
LEGAL MAXIM Every skilled person is to be believed with reference to his own art
LEGAL MAXIM Every man is a hero of his own story.
BRANDON SANDERSON The power of a writer is that he is a god of sorts. He can create his own worlds and populate them w...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.
DAVID SIMON Every hero is the villain of his own story.
HOLLY BLACK There are too many questions still to be answered, too many doubts still to be alleviated to say tha...
CHARLES SCHUMER A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of oth...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters a...
ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because th...
STEPHEN KING I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own ...
SAUL BELLOW A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
JOHN BARTH From Graham Greene, I learnt how to be an accessible writer who grapples with our doubts as sentient...
DOUGLAS KENNEDY The observant Jew has his own sense of values. Torah Judaism is his blueprint for this life, his tar...
MEIR KAHANE Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause...
EUDORA WELTY Sometimes a famous subject may even outlive his own obituary writer.
WALTER CRONKITE Art-speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar, but his art, if it be art, will te...
D.H. LAWRENCE A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master e...
ROALD DAHL To finish is a sadness to a writer - a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. Bu...
JOHN STEINBECK Cheever constantly voiced doubts about his writing. Reading 'The Naked and the Dead' made hi...
GEOFF DYER The IIC wants cartoon villains, not the truth. Mr. Sevan has now reached a point in his dealings wit...
ERIC LEWIS Poor is the man who does not know his own intrinsic worth and tends to measure everything by relativ...
SIDNEY MADWED Poor is the man who does not know his own intrinsic worth and tends to measure everything by relativ...
SYDNEY MADWED What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the societ...
EDWARD ABBEY I began my career creating art for an animated feature film, and it has been a life-long dream to te...
THOMAS KINKADE

More Naguib Mahfouz

The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ My wife thought I deserved it, but I always thought the Nobel a Western prize.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that s...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothin...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I wake up early in the morning and walk for an hour. If I have something to write, I prefer to write...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between rep...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beauti...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don't forget that our herit...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people a...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I ad...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the d...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ In Egypt today most people are concerned with getting bread to eat. Only some of the educated unders...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Without literature my life would be miserable.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ It's clearly more important to treat one's fellow man well than to be always praying and fas...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ If we reject science, we reject the common man.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his quest...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I have condemned Khomeini's fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie as a breach of international relations and ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ When will the state of the country be sound?... When its people believe that the end result of cowar...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ The real malady is fear of life, not of death.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his que...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his quest...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part o...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been trans...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that ...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ We are passing through a very sensitive time, and on the whole, this country is facing very big prob...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ الدنيا من غير طلعة محياها لا تساوي ذره من رماد
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I consider Khomeini's position dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment-that is no...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Happy is he who can give himself up.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ No blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Hosni Mubarak... his constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic. We can voice our opinions...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our fi...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ إن بلادنا في حاجة إلى جرعات قوية من قلة الأدب حيال المل�...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ He knew Muhammad Iffat was of Turkish descent and stubborn as a mule.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Muhammad Iffat has an inflexible, Turkish mentality but a heart of gold.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Home is not where you are born;
home is where all your attempts
to escape cease
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ ...love is like health. It is taken lightly when present and cherished when it departs.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ An anxious heart is like a string that's out of tune.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ April. Month of dust and lies.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ الحــب : لعله جنون أو مرض، ولكنه على أي حال يمثل السعادة...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Laugh till you're exhausted.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ -إنها قسمة عادلة ، فالثراء للأقوياء و الأخلاق للضعفاء
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ عجيبة هذه السلطنة بناسها وعفاريتها..ترفع شعار الله وتغ�...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ سألت الشيخ عبد ربه التائه.
- متى يصلح حال البلد؟
ف...
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his quest...
NAGUIB It's as if our being academic equals means we must be inadequate wives and mothers,' says Noura.
SABRINA MAHFOUZ My character and my behavior is not for politics. I say what I think. I'm too liberal.
NAGUIB SAWIRIS I don't run behind authority.
NAGUIB SAWIRIS I was never someone that was attached to any party. You know, I've always been an independent pe...
NAGUIB SAWIRIS Letters have been found with my name on assassination lists.
NAGUIB SAWIRIS Mubarak's regime is dead and finished. People will not go back to this. This is a farce being pr...
NAGUIB SAWIRIS Any government has to be friendly with investors and the business community. They provide jobs, new ...
NAGUIB SAWIRIS Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but t...
MOHAMMED NAGUIB