At my age it is unseemly to be pessimi.. Naguib Mahfouz

At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.

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Naguib Mahfouz

Profession: Novelist
Nationality: Egyptian

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History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred.

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

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.

The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.

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.

Without literature my life would be miserable.

The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

My countrymen have the right to shake my hand and talk to me if they so wish. Don't forget that their support and their reading of my works is what brought me the Nobel prize.

If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.

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

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

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