Mahmoud Darwish Quotes Page 2

“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.'”

“Sometimes I feel as if I am read before I write. When I write a poem about my mother, Palestinians think my mother is a symbol for Palestine. But I write as a poet, and my mother is my mother. She's not a symbol.”

“Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be.”

“The Arabs are ready to accept a strong Israel with nuclear arms – all it has to do is open the gates of its fortress and make peace.”

“The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.”

“The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.”

“The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty that today is better than what the days ahead will hold. Tomorrow always heralds a worse situation.”

“To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.”

“We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.”

“When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.”

“When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.”

“Without hope we are lost.”

“You won't find the same person twice, not even in the same person.”

“I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood So that I could break the rule I learnt all the words and broke them up To make a single word: Homeland.”

“The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.”

“I want to find a language that transforms language itself into steel for the spirit--a language to use against these sparkling insects, these jets.”

“If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears.”

“I don't decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.”

“Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.”

“We have to understand – not justify – what gives rise to this tragedy. It's not because they're looking for beautiful virgins in heaven, as Orientalists portray it. Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them hope – a political solution – they'll stop killing themselves.”

“My love, I fear the silence of your hands.”

“Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.”

“I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home.”

“I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold.”

“One day, I will be a poet. Water will depend on my visions.”

“The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands.”

“The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read. They taught me I had a language in heaven and another language on earth.”

“We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.”

“We are captives, even if our wheat grows over the fences/ and swallows rise from our broken chains./ We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.”

“Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?”