"Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings."

"The intellectual is an individual with a vocation for the critical examination of society, for the exposure of injustice and oppression, for the assertion of universal values."

"The struggle for decolonization is a struggle for human dignity, for human freedom, for human rights."

"The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences."

"Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience."