Naguib Mahfouz
39 quotes
Biography
Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described him as a writer "who, through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed an Egyptian narrative art that applies to all mankind".
"Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups."
"God did not intend religion to be an exercise club."
"According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment."
"It was amazing that in this country where people allowed emotion to guide their politics they approached love with the precision of accountants."
"It is something worth picking from the thrash-can the alluring experience of the working days."
"Abbas now marveled at the strength of love, its power and its strange magic. He thought it right that God had created mankind capable of love and then left the task of developing life to the fertility of love."
"He [Kirsha] was a narcotics peddler and accustomed to doing his business under a veil of darkness. Normal life had eluded him and he had become a prey to perversions."
"He was, in fact, a veritable crouching tiger, willing to cringe and fawn until he mastered his adversary, and woe to anyone he did master! Experience had taught him that this gentleman and others like him were enemies with whom must be friendly. They were, as he put it, useful devils."
"Satan finds the doors of youth an easy entrance and he slips in both secretly and openly to spread his havoc. We should do all we can do to prevent the doors of youth opening to him and keep them tightly closed. Just think of elderly men to whom age has given the keys of respectability. What would be the situation if we were to see them deliberately opening these doors and calling out in invitation to the devil?"
"It's fantastic the way these young men act. Why, they scarcely have a penny to their names, yet they see no reason why they shouldn't get married and populate the whole alley with children who get their food from garbage carts."
"The barber is young and Mr. Alwan is old; the barber is of the same class as Hamida and Mr. Alwan is not. The marriage of a man like Alwan to a girl like your daughter is bound to bring problems which will make her unhappy."
"If money is the aim and object of those who squabble for power, then there is clearly no harm in money being the objective of the poor voters."
"Kirsha thought of Hitler as the world's greatest bully; indeed his admiration for him stemmed from what he heard of his cruelty and barbarity. He wished him success, viewing him like those mythical bravados of literature Antar and Abu Zaid."
"What hopeless wretches we are. Our country is pitiful and so are the people. Why is it that the only time we find a little happiness is when the world is involved in a bloody war? Surely it's only the devil who has pity on us in this world."
"Some consider that such tragedies afflicting apparently blameless people are signs of revengeful justice, the wisdom of which is beyond the understanding of most people. So you will hear them say that if the bereaved father, for example, thought deeply, he would realize his loss was just a punishment for some sin either he or his forebears committed. Yet surely God is more just and merciful than to treat the innocent as the guilty..."
"[Mahfouz's fiction allowed readers the] rare privilege of entering a national psychology, in a way that thousands of journalistic articles or television documentaries could not achieve."
"Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian novelist who was the first Arabic writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature and who was often considered the greatest writer in the Arab world... lived his entire life in Cairo, which provided the inspiration and backdrop for almost all of his writing... He set most of his works in the ancient Islamic quarter of Cairo, with its mosques and serpentine alleys teeming with shopkeepers, metalsmiths, government workers, peasants, prostitutes and thieves. His vibrant novels portraying life at every level of society were often likened to those of such other writers of urban social realism as Charles Dickens, Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola."
"At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic."
"We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were."
"As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak."
"I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things."
"History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself."
"Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story."
"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 a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening."