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

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.

My wife thought I deserved it, but I always thought the Nobel a Western prize.

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.

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.

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.