Tawfiq al-Hakim quotes:

There is always a state of anxiety, of searching and delving for style.

In the past, traditional art was based on making manifest what is enduring in man, like love, jealousy, hatred, envy, and greed... . Today art has to look again at these unchanging qualities, because society is no longer unchanging. It is up to art today to show us what has become of these unchanging qualities in a world which is moving and changing.

True artistic renewal does not mean being stripped of fetters. It means moving into new fetters.

What I was utterly convinced of, and still am, is the idea that the only responsibility the free intellectual has is vis-a-vis himself. He is not responsible to either a political party or a ruler.

When the artist ... intends from the beginning to be obscure and take obscurity as his objective or goal for its own sake and wishes to astonish, shock, and seem mysterious, that is a swindle.