Mahmoud Darwish Quotes

“A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare.”

“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.”

“And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.”

“And what I don't understand I grasp it only when it's too late.”

“And you became like coffee,
in the deliciousness,
and the bitterness,
and the addiction.”

“Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.”

“Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room.”

“Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.”

“For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.”

“Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.”

“History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.”

“I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in.”

“I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don't hate Jews.”

“I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.”

“I never wanted children; maybe I'm afraid of responsibility.”

“I see poetry as spiritual medicine.”

“I see what I want of Love... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place... I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk... and their need to say: Good Morning.”

“I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet.”

“I wish I were a candle in the darkness.”

“I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state – in my language.”

“If you live, live free or die like the trees, standing up.”

“Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.”

“My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller.”

“Nothing is harder on the soul, than the smell of dreams, while they're evaporating.”

“On this earth there is that which deserves life.”

“Palestinian people are in love with life.”

“Poetry is perhaps what teaches us to nurture the charming illusion: how to be reborn out of ourselves over and over again, and use words to construct a better world, a fictitious world that enables us to sign a pact for a permanent and comprehensive peace with life.”

“Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.”

“She does not love you. Your metaphors thrill her you are her poet. But that's all there's to it.”

“Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.'”