"While writing for Arab readers, it is very important to think about how to get your ideas across. In order to reach everyone, you should make sure to transmit your messages without provoking or drawing the attention of political, religious, and social censorship. Skilled writers are skilled smugglers of ideas. They encrypt their ideas to get their message across smoothly."

"I would, first, advise them to start writing about what they know best (i.e. themselves, their immediate environments, feelings, etc.). Writers should also hone their craft by constant practice, producing many drafts, as haste is a detriment to a writer’s success. My last piece of advice is that, when they achieve success, they should not become arrogant; arrogance can incapacitate writers. Voltaire rightfully says that “the writer dies suffocating under bouquets of flowers.”"

"I have spent many years in Paris. I got married there, started my small family there, and received my PhD at the Sorbonne. Thus, I am very familiar with the issues that could have attracted French and Western media, and paved the way to my fame at the international level; however, I am not interested in that fame. Glory and fame do not mean much to me. I understand that many Algerian writers might have a different attitude, which I respect. But for me, nothing equals the glory of being close to your people and heritage."

"When we lose a love, we write a poem; when we lose our homeland, we write a novel"

"It's upsetting when I see these young people who can speak neither Arabic nor French, and who can't read. How can you be a citizen of a free country when you don't have access to culture?"

"How can we trust each other when we no longer trust ourselves, when we have lost our self-esteem? When we will finally make progress on the path of self-realization, this feeling of rejecting France – and others in general – will automatically recede."

"As I see it, the universal is besieged by the hegemony of the commodity and that of the religious. Two faces of globalisation that have nothing to do with the universal, that is anti-universal, which is a thesis I worked on in my book La Double Impasse, in which there are extensive sections on the culturalist and the essentialist."

"If France wanted to use francophonie to impose anything on me, an ideology or a way of life or whatever, the French language that I have learned and that I use would allow me to fight against such arrogance."

"I believe that in Tunisia, and perhaps in all the Arab countries, the communist parties — for all their many mistakes and shortcomings — were the only place in which ethno-religious affiliations were overcome, which is an element that can’t be overlooked in my personal make-up. My childhood was not at all marked by that kind of segregation."

"Then history took its course, and the lives and fates of individuals were tied to the collective history, as is always the case in our countries, and the Jewish minority left the country, for numerous reasons."

"The Arab world doesn’t want to know it, and this comes out clearly today, when we see what’s happening in Libya with the return of the slave trade. This is the dark part of Arab history. Africans know it and remember it perfectly well."

"How do I introduce myself? Every work, academic or research-based, rests one way or another on a personal make-up. If I wasn’t who I am, or I didn’t receive the make-up that I did, perhaps I wouldn’t have written what I wrote.”"

"The France of fraternity, equality, liberty belongs to me as much as to you'"

"For me, it is an instrument to fight against any form of hegemony, whether political or cultural, and whether it comes from France, America or Russia."

"Our society has failed in its desire to rebuild its freedom, democracy and dignity. The social link between Tunisians themselves has deteriorated."