Quotes from Mahmoud Darwish

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

If you live, live free or die like the trees, standing up.

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

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.

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

Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.'

I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.

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

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.

The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.

History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.

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

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.

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

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

We are captives, even if our wheat grows over the fences/ and swallows rise from our broken chains./ We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.

And you became like the coffee, In the deliciousness, and the bitterness and the addiction.

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.

Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?

And if happiness should surprise you again, do not mention its previous betrayal. Enter into the happiness, and burst.

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

Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said. I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house. Take me to your vineyard. Let me meet your mother. Perfume me with basil water. Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me, imprison me in your name, let love kill me.

No night is long enough for us to dream twice.

My love, I fear the silence of your hands.