“The literary work is more mystical, because it’s only the writer, and connected to something inside.”

I started to write because of my dream to become a filmmaker. I got to know about a film school in Paris and it was my goal to get there.

You somehow have to kill yourself. This is asked of people who haven’t got the tools to understand that it’s all a social construction, and that they shouldn’t inferiorize themselves.

Writing and making films aren’t different things to me. Or maybe it has become so, now. Making film is a very long process and you have to be physically strong.

This is asked of little kids. But I still live in the same outcome.

To do that I knew I had to learn French. In order to practice I started to write journals in French. The effort I made to master what I regarded a bad thing – a language owned by the rich Moroccans – brought me the ability to write.

Many Europeans think that all Moroccans speak French, but no. I had to make an effort to learn it when I studied French literature at the university in Rabat.

Everyone hasn’t got the power to free oneself and go away to another place or country… No one is capable of freeing oneself from society.

We all suffered from the same political rejection, and from poverty. When you’re starving with eleven other people in the same room, you become connected to them forever. We were all hungry at the same time.

I hate to express political ideas directly in a book. I don’t want my books to be seen as an expression of this or that political idea. At the same time I want to show a kind of rebellion and transgression, something further.

My family spent many years sleeping side by side in the same room. It’s important for me to not separate myself from them or to say that I’ve suffered more than they have because I’m gay.

People think that I only write about homosexuality, but that’s not true.

Any gay person understands at some point that he or she has to disappear, to become invisible. That’s very difficult.

So many people and institutions are against homosexuals that, as a homosexual, you can’t waste your time by trying to convince them that you’re a good person.

The piano and the singing are two equal things to me – maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices.

How many times have you prayed or asked or said you needed help, when suddenly somebody showed up in your life? We are all connected through our thoughts.

You have 37.2 trillion cells in your body. There is vastness outside you and vastness inside you. You are connected to this mystery, you are a microcosm of the universe, and every aspect of your life benefits from the universe’s provision.

Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected – pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.

Like ‘naive,’ ‘impulsive’ and ‘way too connected online,’ are all things we can turn into strengths to help us.

I think when you find depression and sadness and hopelessness, Many times it’s connected to certain food and access to quality and nutrition.

Men are not as sophisticated as women. They’re not as mature as women. They’re not as connected with their emotions as women…

And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor