Top 90 Mahmoud Darwish Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

Featured in: Moon Quotes

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

6. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

17. “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

18. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

27. “The wars will end and the leaders will shake hands, and that old woman will remain waiting for her martyred son, and that girl will wait for her beloved husband, and the children will wait for their heroic father, I do not know who sold the homeland but I know who paid the price.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

33. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

38. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

42. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

46. “I love talking to you, even if I have nothing to say.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

49. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish