Naguib Mahfouz Quotes

Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

As for life's tragedies, our love will defeat them. Love is the most effective cure. In the crevices of disasters, happiness lies like a diamond in a mind, so let us instill in ourselves the wisdom of love.

I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.

Madness is the acme of intelligence.

I believe in life and in people. I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from rebellion would be a form of treason

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

When you spend time with your friends, what do you talk about? Those things which made an impression on you that day, that week ... I write stories the same way. Events at home, in school, at work, in the street, these are the bases for a story. Some experiences leave such a deep impression that instead of talking about them at the club I work them into a novel.

You know what I'm afraid of? That God is sick of us.

Visit me once each year, for it's wrong to abandon people forever.

Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

The real malady is fear of life, not of death

If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.

The heart is a place of secrets.

Happy is he who can give himself up.

The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.

There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see.

If life has no meaning, why don't we create a meaning for it?

Excessive concern with religion seems to me a last resort for people who have been exhausted by life.

Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist.

Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.

"Death by love is fairer by far than death by illness", said Amenhotep III.

I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.

At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.

Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.

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

For the first time in my life, I felt that a wave, a justice was sweeping away a deep-seated decay without any indulgence. I dearly wished that it would keep going without hesitation or deviation, in a spirit of purity forever.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.

God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.

Only the poor are handicapped by honor.

According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.

I accepted the interviews and encounters that had to be held with the media, but I would have preferred to work in peace.

When will the state of the country be sound?... When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity.

Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality.

I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization.

He seemed to be waiting for a miracle to save him from the depths his life had reached and take him to a land of dreams.

We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.

Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought.

Insults are the business of the court.

I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.

It's clearly more important to treat one's fellow man well than to be always praying and fasting and touching one's head to a prayer mat.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees.

In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.