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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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