Alaa Al Aswany Quotes & Sayings

A racist is just an ignorant man afraid of people who are different from him. — Alaa Al Aswany

Nationalities are a facist way of thinking aimed at forcing people into a narrow and stupid sense of belonging. It makes some people feel superior to others and perpetuates hatred and war. — Alaa Al Aswany

Later he would ponder the relation between our extreme desire for something and our ability to realize it- was what we wanted inevitably brought about if we wanted it enough? — Alaa Al Aswany

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime. — Alaa Al Aswany

He was one of the great intellectuals of the 1940s who completed
their higher studies in the West and returned to their country to
apply what they had learned there - lock, stock, and barrel - within
Egyptian academia. For people like them, "progress" and "the West"
were virtually synonymous, with all that that entailed by way of positive
and negative behavior. They all had the same reverence for the
great Western values - democracy, freedom, justice, hard work, and
equality. At the same time, they had the same ignorance of the nation's
heritage and contempt for its customs and traditions, which they considered
shackles pulling us toward Backwardness from which it was
our duty to free ourselves so that the Renaissance could be achieved. — Alaa Al Aswany

Our love of beauty is merely a trick produced by the way we look, and the broader the vision grows the clearer the wrinkles are seen — Alaa Al Aswany

He had worked out long ago that police officers evaluated a citizen on the
basis of three factors - his appearance, his occupation, and the way he
spoke; according to this assessment, a citizen in a police station would
either be treated with respect or despised and beaten. — Alaa Al Aswany

Everything that happened to you is a page that's been turned and is done with. — Alaa Al Aswany

Oh that short hair, a la garcon that evokes unfamiliar, boyish kinds of sex. — Alaa Al Aswany

A fascinating book and a great pleasure to read: Betool Khedairi is a talented new voice in fiction. — Alaa Al Aswany

It became clear to her that all men, however respectable in appearance and however elevated their position in society, were utter weaklings in front of a beautiful woman. - The Yacoubian Building, p. 42 — Alaa Al Aswany

If you can't find good in your own country, you won't find it anywhere else. — Alaa Al Aswany

I am according to my slave's expectations of me: if good, then good, and if bad, then bad. — Alaa Al Aswany

And that spark will flash in her eyes confirming that her mind never stops working, even in the heat of passion. — Alaa Al Aswany

Sheikh Bilal had taken
him aside the day before the wedding and spoken to him of marriage
and his wife's rights in the Law, stressing to him that there was nothing
for a Muslim to feel shy about in marrying a woman who was not a
virgin and that a Muslim woman's previous marriage ought not to be a
weak point that her new husband could exploit against her. He said
sarcastically, The secularists accuse us of puritanism and rigidity,
even while they suffer from innumerable neuroses. You'll find that if
one of them marries a woman who was previously married, the
thought of her first husband will haunt him and he may treat her
badly, as though punishing her for her legitimate marriage. Islam has
no such complexes. — Alaa Al Aswany

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. — Alaa Al Aswany

The concept of the benevolent dictator, just like the concepts of the noble thief or the honest whore, is no more than a meaningless fantasy. — Alaa Al Aswany

She represents the beauty of the common people in all its vulgarity and provocativeness. — Alaa Al Aswany

What led to September 11 is that most decision makers in the White House thought like you. They supported despotic regimes in the Middle East to multiply the profits of oil and arms companies, and armed violence escalated and reached our shores. — Alaa Al Aswany

The writer of fiction is not a scholar but an artist impacted emotionally by characters from life, who then strives to present these in his works. These characters present us with human truth but do not necessarily represent social truth. — Alaa Al Aswany

You will not achieve true devotion in one go. The gihad of the soul, Taha, is the Greater Gihad, as the Messenger of God - God bless him and give him peace - called it." "What should I do, Master? — Alaa Al Aswany

Revolution is like a love story. When you are in love, you become a much better person. And when you are in revolution, you become a much better person. — Alaa Al Aswany

A mother loves her children unconditionally. However they wrong her, she'll carry on loving them. — Alaa Al Aswany

With a click, my novel would be born; it would come out into the light suddenly transformed from the hypothetical text composed in my imagination into finished, tangible thing with a real and independent existence. The moment of clicking on the print button always gave rise to strange and powerful ambivalence
a combination of self-satisfaction, gloom and anxiety. Self-satisfaction for having finished writing the book. Gloom because taking my leave of the characters has the same effect on me as when a group of friends have to depart. And anxiety, perhaps because I am on the verge of delivering up into other people's hands something that I treasure. — Alaa Al Aswany