“When I see that people are touched, and they feel solidarity with him, I say to myself, "I made a little change."” Quote by Mano Khalil
“I dream about going back, but I know that it isn't easy. Thirty years of being in Europe has changed my life. I am not the Kurd from Syria anymore as I was before. Kurdistani Syria developed somewhere, and I developed elsewhere. I think we will not find each other easily again. If I go back I will be a foreigner in my own country now. But of course it remains a dream to make another movie in Syria, and I am waiting for that opportunity.” ThinkingCountryDreamOpportunityEasyWaitingChangedElsewhereSyriaChanged My Life Author:Mano Khalil
“The problem of ISIS is not recent. Ever since the Second World War, people in this region have been, and are today, living under brutal dictatorships governed by nationalistic fervor. As for the Kurdish question: nobody from the Arab world is serious about fighting ISIS. It's only the Kurdish people who are standing firm against ISIS. And I think Europe, the United States, and most other democratic countries of the world are beginning to look at the Kurds in another way. The Kurds are really becoming their partners in the region.” PeopleThinkingWorldWarCountryProblemTodayFightingSeriousDemocraticFirmWar Of The WorldsDictatorshipBrutalSecond World WarStand Firm Author:Mano Khalil
“Now the world believes in Kurds, as they have become partners in that region. The West doesn't believe in the Iraqi government - not in Maliki before or Abadi today. It doesn't believe in Syria in any way, nor in Iran. So the Kurds could maybe work together with the Western world to bring stability to the region. It's a nice change, coming as it is after hundreds of years of the struggle of the Kurds.” WorldBelieveTodayTogetherStruggleNiceWesternWorking TogetherStabilitySyria Author:Mano Khalil
“I am not saying that the Kurds are angels, but they have suffered too much. These people have a right to live in their country. The right just to be where they are, in freedom. And now the world has started believing in this. Kurdistan is coming. In some five years, I hope, we will have a flag in New York, hanging with all the other flags.” PeopleWorldBelieveCountryAngel Author:Mano Khalil
“For someone like you who's a British citizen this might seem strange. How can you ban a language? It turns out that you can. During the dictatorship it was illegal to speak Catalan. This is an experience that we Catalans have all had to varying extents. Some more tense than others, but it's something we all share.” SpeakLanguageShareStrangeLike YouDictatorshipSomeone You Like Author:Jaume Cabre
“Each year, in this world, several languages do die out. There are certain languages that have their survival assured for many years, such as English, but there are other languages whose survival is not so sure, such as Catalan, especially if they don't have a state that protects them. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and Andorra. There are about ten million people who understand it and eight and a half who can speak it. But its future is much less certain than, for example, Danish or Slovenian or Latvian, because they have a state.” PeopleWorldSpeakLanguageProtectSurvival Author:Jaume Cabre
“What I strive to do is make my characters seem like real people so that the reader experiences them as people - that's something I've been working on all of my life. I couldn't have written this novel at twenty or thirty, for technical reasons - I didn't have the technique then - but above all because I didn't have the life experiences I have now at sixty-seven.” PeopleRealReasonCharacterNovelStriveLife Experience Author:Jaume Cabre
“I'm always reading, and you learn a lot by reading. When I was twenty-five, I read a lot, but didn't have much reading behind me.” Reading Author:Jaume Cabre
“I read a lot of poetry. All types of poetry, but mostly Catalan poetry, because I believe poetry is the essence of language. Reading the classics, be they medieval or contemporary, gives me a stylistic energy that I'm very interested in.” GivingBelieveReadingEnergyLanguageI BelievePoetry IsMedieval Author:Jaume Cabre
“There were many books in my parents' home. I'm from a family of five children and we were all readers. And so by the time I left home, I had already read many books, and I was very interested in reading more. That was when I started to have the desire to write. But it wasn't like a divine apparition with angels and seraphins on high. Not for me, at least.” WritingChildrenBookHomeDesireReadingDivineAngel Author:Jaume Cabre