Abdellah Taia famous quotes

Any gay person understands at some point that he or she has to disappear, to become invisible. That's very difficult. You somehow have to kill yourself. This is asked of people who haven't got the tools to understand that it's all a social construction, and that they shouldn't inferiorize themselves. This is asked of little kids. But I still live in the same outcome.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Kids #Gay #People

I started to write because of my dream to become a filmmaker. I got to know about a film school in Paris and it was my goal to get there. To do that I knew I had to learn French. In order to practice I started to write journals in French. The effort I made to master what I regarded a bad thing - a language owned by the rich Moroccans - brought me the ability to write.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Dream #School #Writing

My family spent many years sleeping side by side in the same room. It's important for me to not separate myself from them or to say that I've suffered more than they have because I'm gay. We all suffered from the same political rejection, and from poverty. When you're starving with eleven other people in the same room, you become connected to them forever. We were all hungry at the same time.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Sleep #Gay #Years

People think that I only write about homosexuality, but that's not true.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Writing #Thinking #People

Writing and making films aren't different things to me. Or maybe it has become so, now. Making film is a very long process and you have to be physically strong. The literary work is more mystical, because it's only the writer, and connected to something inside.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Strong #Writing #Long

Everyone hasn't got the power to free oneself and go away to another place or country... No one is capable of freeing oneself from society.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Oneself #Capable

So many people and institutions are against homosexuals that, as a homosexual, you can't waste your time by trying to convince them that you're a good person.
-- Abdellah Taia

#People #Trying #Waste

I hate to express political ideas directly in a book. I don't want my books to be seen as an expression of this or that political idea. At the same time I want to show a kind of rebellion and transgression, something further.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Hate #Book #Expression

Many Europeans think that all Moroccans speak French, but no. I had to make an effort to learn it when I studied French literature at the university in Rabat.
-- Abdellah Taia

#Thinking #Speaks French #Effort

Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.

As a kid, I always wanted to obviously win a Super Bowl. Now that I've got one, it's like, 'Now what?' Let's go get another one!

I never had a low self-esteem that would make me gay. At one point, though, the reverse happened. Being homosexual led me to have a loss of self-esteem when I first became aware of society's attitudes about homosexuality.

Obviously I'm not there to pick up anybody, but I'm not afraid to hang out in a predominantly gay establishment.

I've never understood why we would want to deny all the joys - and the challenges - of marriage to anyone. Which is why I think any loving, committed couple - gay or straight - should be able to get married.

Often we want people to pray for us and help us, but we always defeat our object when we look too much to them and lean upon them. The true secret of union is for both to look upon God, and in the act of looking past themselves to Him they are unconsciously united.

Once a leader delegates, he should show utmost confidence in the people he has entrusted.

The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn't permit them to cross boundaries with other people.

The science of anti-Semitism finally comes to explain this phenomenon, enlightening further the consciousness of people, fully satisfying their instinct and its violent eruptions thus legitimized by revealing their cause - the parasitism of the Jews. Thus it gives us the formula of the scientific solution for the problem of Judaism, which in order to realize we have only to apply.

The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum. "Come all to church, good people"- Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come.