“A fascinating book and a great pleasure to read:”

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate.

On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.

If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere else.

Egyptians are like camels: they can put up with beatings, humiliation and starvation for a long time but when they rebel they do so suddenly and with a force that is impossible to control.

Revolution is like a love story. When you are in love, you become a much better person.

I am according to my slave’s expectations of me: if good, then good, and if bad, then bad.

One doesn’t need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt.

Everything that happened to you is a page that’s been turned and is done with.

Betool Khedairi is a talented new voice in fiction.

And when you are in revolution, you become a much better person.

“What if I like watching television? What if I don’t want to do much else other than read a book?”.

Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

I was a really good student. In the sixth grade, I was reading at a twelfth grade reading level. But I got bored.

It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state.

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn’t seen him on their box, buy the paperback.

The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.

I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.

That time is short and it doesn’t return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.