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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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