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

Mahmoud Darwish

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Mahmoud Darwish
Age: 67 †
Born: 1941
Born: January 1
Died: 2008
Died: January 1
Author
Poet
Writer
Al-Birweh
M. Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish
Even
Homeland
Founded
Built
State
Language
States

More quotes by Mahmoud Darwish

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One day, I will be a poet. Water will depend on my visions.
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The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.
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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 want to find a language that transforms language itself into steel for the spirit--a language to use against these sparkling insects, these jets.
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History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.
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The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands.
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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 have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home.
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I wish I were a candle in the darkness.
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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.
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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.
Mahmoud Darwish
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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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And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.
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My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller
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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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For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.
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Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.
Mahmoud Darwish
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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.
Mahmoud Darwish
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Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.
Mahmoud Darwish
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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.
Mahmoud Darwish