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The father had no luck. He was convinced that some distant, heavy curse weighed on his life: out of seven births, he had had seven daughters. The house was occupied by ten women—the seven daughters, the mother, Aunt Aysha, and Malika, the old servant woman. The curse was spread over time. The father thought that one daughter would have been enough. Seven was too many; tragic, even.

— Tahar Ben Jelloun The Sand Child (1985)

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More quotes by Tahar Ben Jelloun

The secret was there, in those pages, woven out of syllables and images.

The Sand Child (1985)

But bad manners or vulgar gestures can sometimes have a touch of poetry about them, just enough not to arouse one's indignation.

The Sand Child (1985)

I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

I saw some words slowly rise and hit the damp ceiling. There they melted in contact with the stone and fell back on my face as drops of water. It amused me. The ceiling was like a writing table.

The Sand Child (1985)

Our steps invent the path as we proceed; behind us they leave no trace, only the void. So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will go…

The Sand Child (1985)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tahar Ben Jelloun (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.