Mahmoud Darwish Quotes
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“The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.”
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“Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.”
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“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.”
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“I don't decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.”
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“Without hope we are lost.”
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“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.”
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“Palestinian people are in love with life.”
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“Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.”
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“Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.”
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“I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don't hate Jews.”
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“I never wanted children; maybe I'm afraid of responsibility.”
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“Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room.”
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“The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.”
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“When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.”
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“I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.”
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“I see poetry as spiritual medicine.”
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“I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.”
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“To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.”
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“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.”
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“For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.”
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“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.'”
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“When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.”