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.

We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.

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.

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

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

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

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