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
Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile. – 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
The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty that today is better than what the days ahead will hold. Tomorrow always heralds a worse situation. – Mahmoud Darwish
The Arabs are ready to accept a strong Israel with nuclear arms – all it has to do is open the gates of its fortress and make peace. – Mahmoud Darwish
Some people ask, ‘How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?’ I say, ‘My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.’ – Mahmoud Darwish
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. – Mahmoud Darwish
Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room. – Mahmoud Darwish
Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down. – Mahmoud Darwish
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it. – Mahmoud Darwish
When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book. – Mahmoud Darwish
I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory. – Mahmoud Darwish
For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity. – 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
I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light. – Mahmoud Darwish
