Mahmoud Darwish Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Palestinian people are in love with life.

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

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

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

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

On this earth there is that which deserves life.

May poetry and God's name have mercy on us!

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

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.

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

I wish I were a candle in the darkness.

Without hope we are lost.

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

We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.

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

I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.

Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.

I never wanted children, maybe I'm afraid of responsibility.

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

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.

I see poetry as spiritual medicine.

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

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

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

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

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 am patient and am waiting for a profound revolution in the consciousness of the Israelis. 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.

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

History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.

My love, I fear the silence of your hands.

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

... For me it is essential, essential for the poet to have a new toast, new songs.

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

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.