Losing hope means ceasing to love my son and my girlfriend and many friends and people around the world.

Knowledge and imagination are the life buoy and the extra lung for breathing outside the walls of a tainted reality.

I'm talking about the essence of humanity. Hope is mixed into the blood of every human being, everywhere and in every time.

It's ridiculous and painful to use the Arabic of an Iraqi poet who lived centuries ago to describe what we in Iraq are suffering today.

I studied at the Academy during the years of economic sanctions. Life was almost dead because the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the civilized world were so strict.

One of the Baathists once told me, "If you're not careful, I'll have you put away," and those words meant death.

We in Iraq have not descended from another planet. Just as people in many other countries have gotten over the tragedy of war, Iraq will get over its ordeal.

In fact I didn't think about fear much at the time. I felt angry about everything that was happening around me: the violence of the dictatorship and the violence of society.

The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media.

I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand.

I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films.

A New Year, all things new!

Forks are absurd, he scoffed. They insult your food. They make it think you're killing it twice.

I don't believe that heaven waits for only those who congregate.

U.S. agricultural products, including safe, high-quality Montana beef, face unscientific trade restrictions in many important markets.

Style helps distinguish you . . . It's a great potential opportunity that people tend to leave by the wayside

I don't like changing with the wind; I like sticking to my own self.

The more we split and pulverise matter artificially, the more insistently it proclaims its fundamental unity.

Trump will not respond to reasoned argument. He will not be held accountable for the things he said. All you can do is point and laugh. Because the devil cannot abide mockery.

Concerning all acts of iniative and creation, there is one elementary truth- that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.

There was a long time where I was an "artist" in quotes, who had no money. But I guess back then I also never had a girlfriend.