Many people ask me—as they do with writers and poets—how I write my letters. It's as if they want to know the path I take to achieve it so they can follow it with me. It would be better for them not to, for I don't want them, nor any of the literary figures, to be restricted in their writing style by my own, or by the style of any other writer. Let them know—if they believe I have any credit for this—that I was only able to write them the letters they know in this style, for which they claim to credit me, because I was able to escape the constraints of imitation and emulation.

Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti