Darwish Quotes & Sayings

I'll emerge, with wings, from the banner I am, bird
that never alights on trees in the garden
I will shed my skin and my language.
Some of my words of love will fall into
Lorca's poems; he'll live in my bedroom
and see what I have seen of the Bedouin moon. I'll emerge
from almond trees like cotton on sea foam — Mahmoud Darwish

In the West "yes" is "yes" and "no" is "no." But when Arabs hear the word "no" from an American they often take it as an insult. That is because Arabs don't say the word "no" directly. Very often they say "in Shaalah" when they mean "no." In dealing with Westerners, an Arab may say "yes' when they really don't mean it, and that gets them in a lot of trouble with Westerners. — Nonie Darwish

"Who Remembers the Armenians?"

I remember them
and I ride the nightmare bus with them
each night
and my coffee, this morning
I'm drinking it with them

You, murderer -
Who remembers you? — Najwan Darwish

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

My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller — Mahmoud Darwish

Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down. — Mahmoud Darwish

Later, we'll look up what was recorded in our history about yours in faraway lands.
Then we'll ask ourselves, Was Andalusia here or there? On earth, or only in poems? — Mahmoud Darwish

And what I don't understand I grasp it only when it's too late. — Mahmoud Darwish

And we have the night ahead of us
to stroll in lilac-scented gardens. Everything there
is here. It is all ours. You are mine, I am yours
and the shadow, your shadow, laughs like an orange. The dream
did its job and, like a postman, hurried on
to someone else. So we have to be
worthy, this evening, of ourselves, and of a river
that runs along beside us, and that we flow into as it flows into us. — 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

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

Longing is the call of ney to ney to restore the direction broken by the horses' hooves in a military campaign. It is an intermittent ailment, neither contagious nor lethal, even when it takes the form of an epidemic. It is an invitation to stay up late with the lonesome and an excuse not to be on equal footing with train passengers who know their own addresses well. It is the transparent fabric of that beautiful nothingness, gathered to roast the coffee of wakefulness for the dreams of strangers. — Mahmoud Darwish

I know who opens the door to the jasmine tree
as it makes our dreams blossom for the evening's guests. — Mahmoud Darwish

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

So which of your Lord's favors do you two deny? You and I are absent, you and I are present and absent. So which of your Lord's favors do you two deny? — Mahmoud Darwish

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

Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life. — Mahmoud Darwish

It would be the simplest thing to say, my homeland is where I was born. But when you returned, you found nothing. What does that mean? It would be the simplest thing to say, my homeland is where I will die. But you could die anywhere, or on the border between two places. What does that mean? After a while the question will become harder. Why did you leave? Why did you leave? For twenty years you have been asking, why did they leave? Leaving is not a negation of the homeland, but it does turn the problem into a question. Do not write a history now. When you do that, you leave the past behind, and what is required is to call the past to account. Do not write a history except that of your wounds. Do not write a history except that of your exile. You are here - here, where you were born. And where longing will lead you to death. So, what is homeland? — Mahmoud Darwish

because you are die surface of my sky.
My body is the land,
the place for you...
the pigeons fly
the pigeons come down... — Mahmoud Darwish

The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read.
They taught me I had a language in heaven
and another language on earth. — Mahmoud Darwish

My love, I fear the silence of your hands. — Mahmoud Darwish

The poem is neither here nor there, and with a girl's breast
it can illuminate the nights.
With the glow of an apple it fills two bodies with light
and with a gardenia's breath it can revive a homeland! — Mahmoud Darwish

Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be. — Mahmoud Darwish

Come with me tonight so that we might make tonight a shared past, says the one afflicted with longing. I will come with you to make a shared tomorrow, says the one afflicted with love. She does not love the past and wants to forget the war that has ended. He fears tomorrow, because the war has not ended and he does not want to grow older. — Mahmoud Darwish

The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives. — Mahmoud Darwish

I wish I were a candle in the darkness. — Mahmoud Darwish

In a world that has no heaven the earth becomes an abyss.
And the poem is one of its consolation prizes.
One of the qualities of the winds, north or south — Mahmoud Darwish

The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality. — Mahmoud Darwish

You, who only know love when in love, do not ask what it is, nor do you look for it. But when a woman once asked you if you were in love with love itself, you were evasive and escaped by answering: I love you. She persisted: Do you not love love? You said: I love you, because of you. She left you, because you could not be trusted with her absence. Love is not an idea. It is an emotion that can cool down or heat up. It comes and goes. It is an embodied feeling and has five, or more, senses. Sometimes it appears as an angel with delicate wings that can uproot us from the earth. Sometimes it charges at us like a bull, hurls us to the ground, and walks away. At other times it is a storm we only recognize in its devastating aftermath. Sometimes it falls upon us like the night dew when a magical hand milks a wandering cloud. — Mahmoud Darwish

Eight centuries have passed
like a nap in the late afternoon
my throat is choked
with words I cannot speak


(from The Last Soldier's Words to Saladin) — Najwan Darwish

The magnitude of this event (9/11) turned the world into a scary place. And perhaps the scariest part of all was that these terrorists believed they were doing God's work. They were trained to view life on earth as of no value and that no act, no matter how barbaric, was off-limits if in pursuit of jihadd. — Nonie Darwish

we Do as the ascendants to GOD ; the prisoners and the unemployeds Do , we Forget the Pain & Raise Hope ~ — Mahmoud Darwish

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

History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor. — Mahmoud Darwish

I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language. — Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish wrote that "extreme clarity is a mystery." That sounds right to me. I don't want anyone hunting for anything ancillary to the true mystery. If that means risking being thought of as glib or dull or banal or stupid or whatever, I guess that will just have to be the way it is. — Matthew Zapruder

I look out on my language, two days later
A short absence is enough
for Aeschylus to open the door to peace
a short speech is enough
for Antonio to incite war
A hand of a woman in my hand
is enough
to embrace my freedom
and for the ebb and flow to begin anew in my body
(I See my Ghost Coming from a Distance) — Mahmoud Darwish

I see poetry as spiritual medicine. — Mahmoud Darwish

If there must be a moon, let it be high,
a high moon made in Baghdad, neither Arab, nor Persian,
nor claimed by the goddesses all around us. — Mahmoud Darwish

I am here. Anything more than that is rumor and slander — 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

We journey towards a home that does not halo our head with a special sun.
Mythical women applaud us. A sea for us, a sea against us. — 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

Just like you, my country cannot hear me:
She's made of bronze
and I
can no longer reach her heart

(from Thoughts on the Statue of Talaat Harb) — Najwan Darwish

We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope. — Mahmoud Darwish

Words are a homeland. — Mahmoud Darwish

We see them oiling their weapons to kill the gryphon they think is hiding in our hen coop. And we cannot help laughing. — Mahmoud Darwish

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

Had I known you, I would have possessed you, and had you known me, you would have possessed me. But then you and I would not be. — Mahmoud Darwish

I leave the other side of my life where it wants to stay, and follow the
remainder of my life in search of the other side of it. — Mahmoud Darwish

I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word:
Homeland.. — Mahmoud Darwish

Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said.
I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house.
Take me to your vineyard.
Let me meet your mother.
Perfume me with basil water.
Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me,
imprison me in your name,
let love kill me. — Mahmoud Darwish

When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions. — 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 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 have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home. — Mahmoud Darwish

I love you so, you are so much yourself!
He is so afraid of his soul:
no "I" now but she. She is now within me.
And no "she" now but only my fragile "I"
At the end of this song, how much I fear that my dream
may not see its dream in her. — Mahmoud Darwish

Don't say that poetry, my friend, is beautiful
or powerful
for there is no powerful or beautiful poetry
There is poetry that strikes you, secretly
with the diseases of writing and schizophrenia, and you rave
and your self leaves you for another — Mahmoud Darwish

The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands. — Mahmoud Darwish

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories. — Mahmoud Darwish

I am familiar with what goes on in the Arab countries, and I'm sad to say that most of us want to annihilate Israel. We want to kill all the Israelis ... Do you know what they used to say in the mosques in Egypt? "We want to go to the White House and turn it into the Islamic House ... " We call upon the Arab countries to stop teaching hatred to the Arab children. — Nonie Darwish

This peace will leave us as a cluster of dust ... — Mahmoud Darwish

I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet. — Mahmoud Darwish

The only paradise we know through our senses and intuition is that of the beloved, and the only hell, disappointment in love. — 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

If you live, live free
or die like the trees, standing up. — Mahmoud Darwish

May poetry and God's name have mercy on us! — Mahmoud Darwish

I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold — Mahmoud Darwish

They want time to move fast so they can paint their nails a provocative red and wear high heels that crack walnuts and make people jump. He wants time to slow down so he can prolong the enjoyment of walking among them, of being next to this self-contained beauty. — 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

I'll search in mythology and archeology
and in every -ology to my old name.
one of the goddesses of Canaan will side with me,
then swear with a flash of lightning.
This is my orphan son — Mahmoud Darwish

Poetry is perhaps what teaches us to nurture the charming illusion: how to be reborn out of ourselves over and over again, and use words to construct a better world, a fictitious world that enables us to sign a pact for a permanent and comprehensive peace ... with life. — Mahmoud Darwish

Without hope we are lost. — Mahmoud Darwish

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

She drew away
from her shadow,so lightening would pass between the two
like a stranger passes through his poem — 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

Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room. — Mahmoud Darwish

Perhaps death is a metaphor to remind us of a secret of life we failed to notice. — Mahmoud Darwish

A poet need not trouble himself if he lies. He lies only in the matter of love, as the regions of the heart are open to tempting conquest. — Mahmoud Darwish

Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body? — Mahmoud Darwish

Jewish success is due to a culture that promotes excellence, blessed with self discipline, education, dedication and a quest for leaving this world a better place. — Nonie Darwish

We have to understand - not justify - what gives rise to this tragedy. It's not because they're looking for beautiful virgins in heaven, as Orientalists portray it. Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them hope - a political solution - they'll stop killing themselves. — Mahmoud Darwish

He says I am from there, I am from here, but I am neither there nor here. I have two names which meet and part ... I have two languages, but I have long forgotten - which is the language of my dreams — Mahmoud Darwish

An Opera for Kamal Boullata

If I were one of those musicians
who penned grand Italian operas
where the notes, like clogs
strike all the chords
of Mediterraneans like us
I would compose one
and dedicate it to you

Yet sadly these shrill words
are all I have for you — Najwan 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 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

When the image is identical to reality, the imagination is compelled to be neutral. Therefore let the image of the object lie to the object so we can see what lies beyond the object, and in the light of that vision see what saves us from nothingness. — Mahmoud Darwish

How often have I held back my complaint: Why should the Lebanese homeland be incompatible with Palestine? Why should the Egyptian loaf be incompatible with Palestine? Why should the Syrian roof be incompatible with Palestine? Why should Palestine be incompatible with Palestine? — Mahmoud Darwish

Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance, — Mahmoud Darwish

Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism. — Mahmoud Darwish

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

The mercy bullet
I envy horses: if they break a leg and feel humiliated because they can no longer charge back and forth in the wind, they are cured by a mercy bullet. So if something in me gets broken, physically or spiritually, I would do well to look for a proficient killer, even if he is one of my enemies. I will pay him a fee and the price of the bullet, kiss his hand and his revolver, and if I am able to write, extol him in a poem of rare beauty, for which he can choose the metre and rhyme. — Mahmoud Darwish

I Will Rise One Day

I will rise one day and speak it
I, the Kurd, will rise one day
and speak it
I, the Amazigh, your voice
will rise one day
I, the Arab you know
will rise one day
and speak it:
They've gone now, Saladin — Najwan Darwish

I prepare my portrait for my woman to hang on a wall when I die.
she says: Is there a wall to hang it on?
I say: We'll build a room for it. Where? In any house. — Mahmoud Darwish

A bit of mist and light suffice for life to overpower nothingness. A bit of hope and time suffice for you to cross the mountain trails of myth; you were spared the fate of your ancestors. So borrow the wisdom of the anemones and say: Nothingness does not concern me, even if death besieges me. — Mahmoud Darwish

And if happiness should surprise you again, do not mention its previous betrayal.
Enter into the happiness, and burst. — Mahmoud Darwish

I never wanted children; maybe I'm afraid of responsibility. — Mahmoud Darwish

The long road has drained me of all feelings and expectations. I don't feel a thing or expect anything now. — Mahmoud Darwish

The image of love reveals itself there; in a profoundly present absence. — Mahmoud Darwish

The bigger the lie, the more believable it becomes to the average Arab citizen. Thus, Arab media never fail to be less than outrageous. They blamed the defeat on none other than Israel, as though self-defense and self-preservation was not a right to be exercised by the Jewish enemy. — Nonie Darwish