Top 90 Mahmoud Darwish Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

53. “I have passed by many eyes but only got lost in yours.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

54. “May life suddenly open on the wing of a butterfly fluttering over a rhyme for those who do not care about meaning.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

55. “Get rid of my tomorrow. Return my yesterday and leave us alone together. After you nothing leaves and nothing returns.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

56. “No night is long enough for us to dream twice.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

57. “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

58. “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.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

59. “The only paradise we know through our senses and intuition is that of the beloved, and the only hell, disappointment in love.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

60. “After you nothing goes and nothing returns.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

61. “I see poetry as spiritual medicine.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

62. “They want time to move fast so they can paint their nails a provocative red and wear high heels that crack walnuts and make people jump. He wants time to slow down so he can prolong the enjoyment of walking among them, of being next to this self-contained beauty.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

63. “When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

64. “From afar, the poems come. I resemble you, yet I do not become you. I become you, yet I do not resemble you.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

65. “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

66. “Had I known you, I would have possessed you, and had you known me, you would have possessed me. But then you and I would not be.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

68. “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.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

69. “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.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

70. “So which of your Lord’s favors do you two deny? You and I are absent, you and I are present and absent. So which of your Lord’s favors do you two deny?”

— Mahmoud Darwish

71. “When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

72. “Graveyards have the dignity of air, the authority of dust.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

73. “Yet you love sleep and salute Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, and forget that he is death’s brother.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

74. “Fame is the enemy of instinct and spontaneity, the difference between what is said and what ought to be said, and the transformation of one person into two.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

75. “When the image is identical to reality, the imagination is compelled to be neutral. Therefore let the image of the object lie to the object so we can see what lies beyond the object, and in the light of that vision see what saves us from nothingness.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

76. “I never wanted children; maybe I’m afraid of responsibility.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

77. “We see them oiling their weapons to kill the gryphon they think is hiding in our hen coop. And we cannot help laughing.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

78. “For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

79. “I am besieged by contradiction.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

80. “A poet need not trouble himself if he lies. He lies only in the matter of love, as the regions of the heart are open to tempting conquest.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

81. “Silence has gossiping walls, emptiness slandering emptiness.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

82. “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

83. “The long road has drained me of all feelings and expectations. I don’t feel a thing or expect anything now.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

84. “Perhaps death is a metaphor to remind us of a secret of life we failed to notice.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

85. “I used to invent love when necessary. When I walked alone on the riverbank. Or whenever the level of salt would rise in my body, I would invent the river.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

86. “The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

87. “The image of love reveals itself there; in a profoundly present absence.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

88. “Come with me tonight so that we might make tonight a shared past, says the one afflicted with longing. I will come with you to make a shared tomorrow, says the one afflicted with love. She does not love the past and wants to forget the war that has ended. He fears tomorrow, because the war has not ended and he does not want to grow older.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

90. “I testify that I am free and alive when I am forgotten.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

91. “I’ve built my homeland, I’ve even founded my state – in my language.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

92. “A bit of mist and light suffice for life to overpower nothingness. A bit of hope and time suffice for you to cross the mountain trails of myth; you were spared the fate of your ancestors. So borrow the wisdom of the anemones and say: Nothingness does not concern me, even if death besieges me.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

94. “Letters are restless, hungry for an image, and the image is thirsty for a meaning.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

95. “Thus, lethargic letters, which carry no value when separate, build a house when they come together.”

— Mahmoud Darwish