Quotes from Mahmoud Darwish

She does not love you. Your metaphors thrill her you are her poet. But that's all there's to it. from "She Does Not Love You

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

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

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

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..

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

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

Please take your time. I want you to kill me slowly so I can write my last poem to my wife's heart. They laughed, and took from me only the words dedicated to my wife's heart.

We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.

Maybe the moon is beautiful only because it is far.

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.

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

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

I love you so, you are so much yourself! He is so afraid of his soul: no "I" now but she. She is now within me. And no "she" now but only my fragile "I" At the end of this song, how much I fear that my dream may not see its dream in her.

If there must be a moon, let it be high, a high moon made in Baghdad, neither Arab, nor Persian, nor claimed by the goddesses all around us.

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

I leave the other side of my life where it wants to stay, and follow the remainder of my life in search of the other side of it.

I melt at your glances and become music.

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

May poetry and God's name have mercy on us!

And I say to myself: a moon will rise from my darkness.

I see what I want of Love... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place... I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk... and their need to say: Good Morning...

I know who opens the door to the jasmine tree as it makes our dreams blossom for the evening's guests.

There is no name for what life should be, except what you did and what you do to my soul.