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

Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.

This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.

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.

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.

We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.