I wish I were a candle in the darkness.
Mahmoud Darwish
Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one – to be.
Mahmoud Darwish
I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.
Mahmoud Darwish
If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, Their oil would become Tears.
Mahmoud Darwish
Nothing is harder on the soul, than the smell of dreams, while they’re evaporating.
Mahmoud Darwish
We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.
Mahmoud Darwish
And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.
Mahmoud Darwish
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
Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.
Mahmoud Darwish
Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.
Mahmoud Darwish
We suffer from an incurable malady – Hope.
Mahmoud Darwish
On this earth there is that which deserves life.
Mahmoud Darwish
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
The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.
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
Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.
Mahmoud Darwish
Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.
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
She does not love you. Your metaphors thrill her you are her poet. But that’s all there’s to it.
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
And you became like coffee, in the deliciousness, and the bitterness, and the addiction.
Mahmoud Darwish
If you live, live free or die like the trees, standing up.
Mahmoud Darwish
Out of my ignorance, I called you a homeland and I forgot homelands are taken away.
Mahmoud Darwish
Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?
Mahmoud Darwish
History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.
Mahmoud Darwish
Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.
Mahmoud Darwish
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word – Home.
Mahmoud Darwish
I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.
Mahmoud Darwish
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
Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.
Mahmoud Darwish
My love, I fear the silence of your hands.
Mahmoud Darwish
My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller.
Mahmoud Darwish
On the train we swapped seats, you wanted the window and I wanted to look at you.
Mahmoud Darwish
And what I don’t understand I grasp it only when it’s too late.
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
Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room.
Mahmoud Darwish
I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold.
Mahmoud Darwish
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
I see poetry as spiritual medicine.
Mahmoud Darwish
I’ve built my homeland, I’ve even founded my state – in my language.
Mahmoud Darwish
The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands.
Mahmoud Darwish
Are we what we do with time, or are we what time does with us?
Mahmoud Darwish
One day, I will be a poet. Water will depend on my visions.
Mahmoud Darwish
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.
Mahmoud Darwish
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
I never wanted children, maybe I’m afraid of responsibility.
Mahmoud Darwish
On this earth there is that which deserves life.
Mahmoud Darwish
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.
Mahmoud Darwish
No night is long enough for us to dream twice.
Mahmoud Darwish
The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.
Mahmoud Darwish
