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.

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.

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.

You learn something from the classics but your feelings and your imagination operate in the domain of the colloquial. We need to think seriously about reforming the Arabic that we use today.

Be fervent in God, and let nothing grieve you, whatever you encounter.

Where there is light, there is a way out of the darkness

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

I had always believed that I left a bit of me wherever I went. I also believed that I took a bit of every place with me.

Our media are completely lost in a wilderland of moral equivalence, eagerly prostituting themselves to monsters and terrorists.

In life, people will take you at your own reckoning.

Faith without works is as dead as a doornail.

An idea is something you have; an ideology is something that has you

My father's generation gave to my generation a land of wealth and purpose and world economic dominance.

No matter how much you disagree with your kin, if you are a thoroughbred you will not discuss their shortcomings with the neighbors.