Top 90 Mahmoud Darwish Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

2. “I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

3. “Without hope we are lost.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

4. “On this earth there is that which deserves life.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

5. “Nothing is harder on the soul, than the smell of dreams, while they’re evaporating.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

6. “My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

7. “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

8. “Are we what we do with time, or are we what time does with us?”

— Mahmoud Darwish

9. “We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

11. “Palestinian people are in love with life.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

12. “Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

13. “Maybe the moon is beautiful only because it is far.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

14. “Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

15. “On the train we swapped seats, you wanted the window and I wanted to look at you.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

16. “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

17. “The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

18. “Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

20. “I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

21. “She does not love you. Your metaphors thrill her you are her poet. But that’s all there’s to it.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

22. “Coffee should not be drunk in a hurry. It is the sister of time, and should be sipped slowly, slowly. Coffee is the sound of taste, a sound for the aroma. It is a meditation and a plunge into memories and the soul.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

23. “Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?”

— Mahmoud Darwish

24. “I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don’t hate Jews.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

25. “Out of my ignorance, I called you a homeland and I forgot homelands are taken away.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

26. “A University degree, four books, and hundreds of articles and I still make mistakes when reading. You wrote me ‘good morning’ and I read it as ‘I love you’.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

27. “I wish I were a candle in the darkness.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

28. “We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

29. “I melt at your glances and become music.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

31. “You won’t find the same person twice, not even in the same person.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

32. “They asked ‘do you love her to death?’ I said ’speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

34. “My love, I fear the silence of your hands.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

35. “I am patient and am waiting for a profound revolution in the consciousness of the Israelis. 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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

36. “Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

38. “Do not be absent for too long, then come and ask about how I am, details die with time and stories change.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

39. “I am here. Anything more than that is rumor and slander.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

40. “We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April’s hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn, a woman’s point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute’s sigh and the invaders’ fear of memories.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

41. “I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

43. “May poetry and God’s name have mercy on us!”

— Mahmoud Darwish

44. “History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

45. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

47. “If you asked me how many times you came in my mind, I would say once. Because you came, and never left.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

48. “And what I don’t understand I grasp it only when it’s too late.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

49. “How often have I held back my complaint: Why should the Lebanese homeland be incompatible with Palestine? Why should the Egyptian loaf be incompatible with Palestine? Why should the Syrian roof be incompatible with Palestine? Why should Palestine be incompatible with Palestine?”

— Mahmoud Darwish

50. “All roads lead to you, even those I took to forget you.”

— Mahmoud Darwish