180 Quotes by Naguib Mahfouz

An anxious heart is like a string that’s out of tune.

When we’re in love, we may resent it, but we certainly miss love once it’s gone.

No blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer.

I reject any path which rejects life, but I can’t help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.

Beauty itself is a painful convulsion in the heart, an abundance of vitality in the soul, and a mad chase undertaken by the spirit until it encounters the heavens.

How could the prisoner break his chains? I pictured a world, a righteous world, with no sin, no bonds, no social obligations; a world throbbing with creativity, innovation, and thought, nothing else; a world of dedicated solitude, without father, mother, wife, or child; a world where a man could travel lightly, immersed in art alone.

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.

Every inch a person’s body travels on the road of separation seems like miles to the heart.

Sadat made us feel more secure.