Quotes from Mahmoud Darwish

Peace to the hint of sadness in your eyes.

Take me back to where I was before I met you, then leave

I search for a lost sky.

How do I say I miss you in a way that will make your heart ache as mine does?

How much I love you! How much you are you! and intimidated by his own soul: There is no I now, but she is now in me. No she, but I am in her fragility. How I fear For my dream, lest it see a dream that is not she at The end of this song… — Mahmoud Darwish, from "The Strangers' Walk," Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? , trans. by Mohammad Shaheen ( Hesperus Press, 2014)

If you asked me how many times you came in my mind, I would say once. Because you came, and never left.

There is no tomorrow in This desert except what we saw yesterday

There must be a secret. There must be an ongoing secret for love to remain a surprise and a gift.

We know best about these devils Who of children prophets make

You won't find the same person twice, not even in the same person.

Remember yourself before all turns to dust

She says: When are we going to meet? I say: After a year and a war She says: When does the war end? I say: When we meet

If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears

March roses shall burn me in the land where I was first born. / Pomegranate blossoms will conceive of me, / and I will be born from it once more.

Silence has gossiping walls, emptiness slandering emptiness.

because words can encompass so much of the illusion of synonyms, and because metaphor is often subject to transformation: from "my homeland is not a suitcase" to "my homeland is a suitcase.

as an eternal visitor. No life and no death in what I sense as a bird passing beyond nature. when I embrace you… — Mahmoud Darwish, from "Maybe, Because Winter Is Late," The Butterfly's Burden . Copper Canyon Press, 2006

Boredom is humiliating, like desire erupting out of place.

Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume, my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. — Mahmoud Darwish, from "Sonnet V," The Butterfly's Burden (Copper Canyon Press, August 1, 2006)

I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold — Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (University of California Press; 0 edition, January 6, 2003)

Who am I to say to you what I'm saying?

What would happen if I were to become A child again? And I returned to you… and you returned to me.

You are struck with a sour feeling of regret for a mistake you did not commit: You are not responsible for what happened.

They have saddled the horses, They know not why, But they have saddled the horses at the end of the night