1. “All roads lead to you, even those I took to forget you.” – Mahmoud Darwish
2. “On this earth there is that which deserves life.” – Mahmoud Darwish
3. “Letters are restless, hungry for an image, and the image is thirsty for a meaning.” – Mahmoud Darwish
4. “We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.” – Mahmoud Darwish
5. “When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.” – Mahmoud Darwish
6. “Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.” – Mahmoud Darwish
7. “Get rid of my tomorrow. Return my yesterday and leave us alone together. After you nothing leaves and nothing returns.” – Mahmoud Darwish
8. “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
9. “I have passed by many eyes but only got lost in yours.” – Mahmoud Darwish
10. “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
11. “Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.” – Mahmoud Darwish
12. “After you nothing goes and nothing returns.” – Mahmoud Darwish
13. “Coffee should not be drunk in a hurry. It is the sister of time, and should be sipped slowly, slowly. Coffee is the sound of taste, a sound for the aroma. It is a meditation and a plunge into memories and the soul.” – Mahmoud Darwish
14. “I don’t decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.” – Mahmoud Darwish
15. “No night is long enough for us to dream twice.” – Mahmoud Darwish
16. “The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.” – Mahmoud Darwish
17. “Silence has gossiping walls, emptiness slandering emptiness.” – Mahmoud Darwish
18. “Nothing is harder on the soul, than the smell of dreams, while they’re evaporating.” – Mahmoud Darwish
19. “You won’t find the same person twice, not even in the same person.” – Mahmoud Darwish
20. “When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.” – Mahmoud Darwish
21. “Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.” – Mahmoud Darwish
22. “The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.” – Mahmoud Darwish
23. “One day, I will be a poet. Water will depend on my visions.” – Mahmoud Darwish
24. “May life suddenly open on the wing of a butterfly fluttering over a rhyme for those who do not care about meaning.” – Mahmoud Darwish
25. “Are we what we do with time, or are we what time does with us?” – Mahmoud Darwish
26. “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
27. “Without hope we are lost.” – Mahmoud Darwish
28. “The only paradise we know through our senses and intuition is that of the beloved, and the only hell, disappointment in love.” – Mahmoud Darwish
29. “We still live as if death mistakes us. We—who are capable of remembrance—are capable of liberation.” – Mahmoud Darwish
30. “We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.” – Mahmoud Darwish
31. “To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.” – Mahmoud Darwish
32. “I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home.” – Mahmoud Darwish
33. “And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.” – Mahmoud Darwish
34. “The image of love reveals itself there; in a profoundly present absence.” – Mahmoud Darwish
35. “And what I don’t understand I grasp it only when it’s too late.” – Mahmoud Darwish
36. “Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be.” – Mahmoud Darwish
37. “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
38. “If you asked me how many times you came in my mind, I would say once. Because you came, and never left.” – Mahmoud Darwish
39. “I am here. Anything more than that is rumor and slander.” – Mahmoud Darwish
40. “The long road has drained me of all feelings and expectations. I don’t feel a thing or expect anything now.” – Mahmoud Darwish
41. “May poetry and God’s name have mercy on us!” – Mahmoud Darwish
42. “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
43. “Silence has gossiping walls, emptiness slandering emptiness.” – Mahmoud Darwish