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

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.

Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.

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

My love, I fear the silence of your hands.

We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.