Mahmoud Darwish Quotes

By Alan Reiner – July 20, 2024

‘The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.’ – 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

‘I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘Without hope we are lost.’ – 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

‘Palestinian people are in love with life.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘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

‘History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don’t hate Jews.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘I never wanted children; maybe I’m afraid of responsibility.’ – 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

‘The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘I’ve built my homeland, I’ve even founded my state – in my language.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘I see poetry as spiritual medicine.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘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.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘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.” – 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

‘The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.’ – 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

‘I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.’ – Mahmoud Darwish

‘Without hope we are lost.’ – 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