Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by Mahmoud Darwish
Explore 25 verified and sourced quotes attributed to Mahmoud Darwish. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
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Selected quotes by Mahmoud Darwish
History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.
Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.
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.
Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.
Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room.
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.
Palestinian people are in love with life.
I don't decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.
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.
The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.
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.
I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.
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.'
I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.
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.
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.
To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.
When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.
Without hope we are lost.
I see poetry as spiritual medicine.
I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don't hate Jews.
I never wanted children; maybe I'm afraid of responsibility.
For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.
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