My dream was never to become this unattainable star.
If I have to climb to heaven on a ladder, I shall decline the invitation.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Whoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstasies of learning; for I come from heights that no bird ever reached in its flight, I know abysses into which no foot ever strayed.
We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.
On the top you are always lonely.
We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.
Nearer the gods no mortal may approach.
