It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.

Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

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.

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.

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

Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.

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.