Mahmoud Darwish Quotes - Page 2

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

Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.

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

History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.

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

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

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

Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Palestinian people are in love with life.

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

I see poetry as spiritual medicine.

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.

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

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

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

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

Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.

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.

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.