Top 90 Mahmoud Darwish Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

54. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

59. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

61. “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

62. “I see poetry as spiritual medicine.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

63. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

67. “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

68. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

75. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

78. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

82. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

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

— Mahmoud Darwish

90. “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

91. “I am besieged by contradiction.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

92. “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

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

— 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