Mahmoud Darwish > Quotes

“If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“My love, I fear the silence of your hands.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, A River Dies of Thirst: journals

“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.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“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.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982

“... For me it is essential, essential for the poet to have a new toast, new songs.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“لفارق بين النرجس و عبّاد الشمس هو
الفرق بين وجهتي نظر: الأول ينظر إلى صورته في الماء و يقول: لا انا إلا أنا. و الثاني ينظر إلى الشمس و يقول: ما انا إلاما أعبد.
و في الليل، يضيق الفارق، و يتسع التأويل!”
― Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly's Burden

“Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Absent Presence

“Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence

“A poem exists only in the relation between poet and reader. And I'm in need of my readers, except that they never cease to write me as they would wish, turning their reading into another writing that almost rubs out my features. I don't know why my poetry has to be killed on the altar of misunderstanding or the fallacy of ready-made intent. I am not solely a citizen of Palestine, though I am proud of this affiliation and ready to sacrifice my life in defending the radiance of the Palestinian fact, but I also want to take up the history of my people and their struggle from an aesthetic angle that differs from the prevalent and repeatable meanings readily available from an unmediated political reading.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“The boy went back to his family there, in the distance, in a distance he did not find there in the distance. My grandfather died counting sunsets, seasons, and heartbeats on the fingers of his withered hands. He dropped like a fruit forbidden a branch to lean its age against. They destroyed his heart. He wearied of waiting here, in Damur. He said goodbye to friends, water pipe, and children and took me and went back to find what was no longer his to find there. Here the number of aliens increased, and refugee camps got bigger. A war went by, then two, three, and four. The homeland got farther and farther away, and the children got farther and farther from mother's milk after they had tasted the milk of UNRWA. So they bought guns to get closer to a homeland flying out of their reach. They brought their identity back into being, re-created the homeland, and followed their path, only to have it blocked by the guardians of civil wars. They defended their steps, but then path parted from path, the orphan lived in the skin of the orphan, and one refugee camp went into another. ”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“I see a bird carrying me and carrying you, with us as its wings, beyond the dream, to a journey that has no end and no beginning, no purpose and no goal. I do not speak to you, and you do not speak to me; we listen only to the music of silence. Silence is the friend's trust of friend, imagination's self-confidence between rain and rainbow.
A rainbow is inspiration provoking the poet, uninvited, the infatuation of the poet with the prose of the Quran.
Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown?
We are absent, you and I; we are present, you and I.
And absent.
Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown?”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Absent Presence

“we Do as the ascendants to GOD ; the prisoners and the unemployeds Do , we Forget the Pain & Raise Hope ~”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Selected Poems

“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.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

“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...”
― Mahmoud Darwish, If I Were Another: Poems

“paz al sueño de los que tienen tiempo para la lectura. Paz a los fatigados"

"tengo la sabiduría del condenado a muerte: no tengo cosas que me posean"

"pregunto: señoras y señores de buena voluntad, ¿la tierra de los hombres es para todos los hombres / como afirmáis? entonces ¿dónde estoy yo, dónde está mi choza? la asamblea me aplaude (...) acaba de aprobar / nuestro derecho a volver, como todos los pollos, como todos los caballos, a un sueño de piedra (...)”
― Mahmoud Darwish