Quotes from Naguib Mahfouz

Sadat made us feel more secure.

I wake up early in the morning and walk for an hour. If I have something to write, I prefer to write in the morning until midday, and in the afternoon, I eat.

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.

I thought they would never select an Eastern writer for the Nobel. I was surprised.

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

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

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

I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.

Happy is he who can give himself up.

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

Only the poor are handicapped by honor.

In Egypt today most people are concerned with getting bread to eat. Only some of the educated understand how democracy works.

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.

I've never worked in politics, never been a member of an official committee or a political party.

I consider Khomeini's position dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment-that is not the Islamic way.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I am practically in the employ of Mr. Nobel. I have to meet everyone he sends my way.