I'm optimistic because I'm pragmatic: Neither of the two sides, the military government nor the Islamic front, is capable of winning. If they continue to fight, they will both bleed to death.

Yes, I am Algerian of Moroccan origin through my parents, but all my life is Algeria. I was born there.

Peace does not include a vendetta; there will be neither winners nor losers.

It is obvious that taking the country from a state of war to being a lawful state won't be easy.

The liberation movement which I led in Algeria, the organization that I created to fight the French army, was at first a small movement of nothing at all. We were but some tens of people throughout Algeria, a territory that is five times the size of France.

Everywhere that the struggle for national freedom has triumphed, once the authorities agreed, there were military coups d'etat that overthrew their leaders. That is the result time and time again.

I am the son of poor peasants who came at a very young age to live in Algeria. I only recently saw the place where they were born, near the city of Marrakech.

Those who are leftists, once in power, are not different from other parties.

In two years, there were 22 military coups d'etat, essentially in Africa and the third world. The coup d'etat of Algiers, in 1965, is what opened the path.

I'm optimistic because I'm pragmatic: Neither of the two sides, the military government nor the Islamic front, is capable of winning. If they continue to fight, they will both bleed to death.

These are the multinationals, like General Motors and Nestle; these are the big industrial groups that weigh, on the monetary scale, much more than big countries like Egypt.

It's with them that we have constituted a liberation front and brought our logistic support to armies to help their countries come out of colonialism and establish a national internal regime.

I accommodated practically all of the liberation movements, including those of Latin America.

Colonialism is an idea born in the West that drives Western countries - like France, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain - to occupy countries outside of Europe.

Algeria was therefore only the beginning of something that was in development: this is why I say that it's the global capitalist system that finally reacted against us.

Colonialism is known in its primitive form, that is to say, by the permanent settling of repressive foreign powers, with an army, services, policies. This phase has known cruel colonial occupations which have lasted 300 years in Indonesia.

When someone came to ask us for help, it was sacred. We did not even think twice. We helped them, even if we had only meagre means; we offered them arms, a little bit of money, and in occasion, men.

I am a Muslim Arab, in my actions oriented very to the left, in my convictions.

Algeria is not breaking up.

My life has been a bit special, this is true. I participated in the liberation of my country. I was one of the organisers of its struggle for liberation. I likewise actively participated in all the struggles for liberation.

I am not a Marxist, but I place myself resolutely at the left.

When I was engaged in the struggle for my country, I was very young. My horizons were open.

With my government, we engaged in bringing our help to fights for national freedom. At that precise moment, several countries were still colonised or had barely overcome colonisation. This was the case in practically all of Africa. We supported them.

Che came in 1963, shortly after I had come to power.

The French colonisation of Algeria lasted a long time: 132 years.

Yes, my life is a life of combat; I can say that this has never stopped for a single instant. It is a combat that started for me at the age of 16. I'm 90 years old now, and my motivation hasn't changed; it's the same fervour that drives me.

From their point of view, I had gone too far. I had to disappear. That is to say, if the Algerian army had not overthrown me, others would have done so.

I can say now: all the combatants who participated in the fight for freedom in South America came to Algeria; it's from there that all those who fought left. We trained them, we arranged for the weapons to reach them, we created networks.

In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.

I think that they participated in something that was not very proper and was very pitiful, not only for the Algerian people, but also for the other people who counted on our support.

To know that one has never really tried - that is the only death.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. It's like death.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

Death is a distant rumor to the young.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

I don't sit in the corner waiting for death: death has to pursue me. I'm going strong. I hope to reach 100 and ask for an extension, just like my grandmother did.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

I'm Irish. I think about death all the time.

I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.

Death doesn't frighten me; now I can think peacefully of ending a long life.

Death comes for us all. Even for kings he comes.

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.

It has ever been since time began, and ever will be, till time lose breath, that love is a mood - no more - to man, and love to a woman is life or death.

Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is.