"Secret migration" across borders is a form of human degradation and evidence of the depravity of the human conscience.

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.

There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.

Everything that ever happened to me that was important happened in the desert.

The most important thing to me is the friends that I've made.

Try and stay sober. Until the curtain call. And for God's sake, have fun. Don't suffer for your art. Just have fun.

Greater even than the greatest discovery is to keep open the way to future discovery.

One shouldn't talk of halters in the hanged man's house.

Nothing aids which may not also injure us. Fire serves us well, but he who plots to burn His neighbor's roof arms his hands with fire.

Isn't Disney World a people trap operated by a mouse?

I'm one of the world's greatest pencil sharpeners.

In reality, I don't think that many of the policies we've attempted to apply to deal with it are going to have any serious effect.