10 Brilliant Quotes By Egyptian Authors

We're just going to go right ahead and say it - we're judging you pretty hard if you consider the Twilight series to be a good read. It's really not. It's probably a detriment to anyone's intellectual abilities, right up there with basically anything by Nicholas Sparks. We're not snooty, we just know good writing when we read it (or when we write it). While often Egyptians consistently covet all things American, we just wanted to point out that there are some amazingly intellectual authors right here in Egypt whose words may not be plastered onto motivational images all over the Internet but whose wisdom both captivates and enlightens. 

 “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, The Yacoubian Building 

“Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.” ― Nawal El-Saadawi, Walking Through Fire: A Life of Nawal El Saadawi

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell a man is wise by his questions.” ― Naguib Mahfouz 

“But things move on and by the time you've plotted your position the world around you has changed and you are running – panting -  to catch up.” ― Adhaf Soueif, The Map of Love

“I detest farewells and feel that parting, as some foreign poets say, is 'dying a little.' I do not like to meet death, however easy it may be, nor do I like to be aware of it, to await it, or to fear it. I prefer for it to take me by complete surprise, that it should snatch me away suddenly, that I should exit life as inadvertently as I entered it.” ― Taha Hussein

“There’s beauty in everything, but not everyone is able to feel it.” ― Anis Mansour

"Home is not where you were born, home is where all your attempts to escape cease." ― Omar Taher, Jarr Nai’em

"Artists try to depict people; and people depict the artists' conception of people." ― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“Fear doesn't prevent death. It prevents life.”― Naguib Mahfouz 

“Memory is never complete. There are always parts of it that time has amputated. Writing is a way of retrieving them, of bringing the missing parts back to it, of making it more holistic.” ― Nawal El-Saadawi, A Daughter of Isis: The Autobiography of Nawal El Saadawi