Naguib Mahfouz

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning.

We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don't forget that our heritage includes The Thousand and One Nights.

My countrymen have the right to shake my hand and talk to me if they so wish. Don't forget that their support and their reading of my works is what brought me the Nobel prize.

paraphrasing.."Science is the language of the intellect of society. Art is language of the entire human personality.

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Madness is the acme of intelligence.