Mahmoud Darwish Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“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.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Palestinian people are in love with life.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“And you became like coffee, in the deliciousness, and the bitterness, and the addiction.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance,”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“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..”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“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.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“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.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“I don't decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“My love, I fear the silence of your hands.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“If you live, live free or die like the trees, standing up.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“I never wanted children; maybe I'm afraid of responsibility.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don't hate Jews.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“On this earth there is that which deserves life.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
“I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.”
-- Mahmoud Darwish