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I don't decide to represent anything except myself. But that self is full of collective memory.

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
Memory
Except
Memories
Full
Anything
Collectives
Self
Collective
Represent
Decide

More quotes by Mahmoud Darwish

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Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.
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I am patient and am waiting for a profound revolution in the consciousness of the Israelis. 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.
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And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.
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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.
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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.
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And what I don't understand I grasp it only when it's too late.
Mahmoud Darwish
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Without hope we are lost.
Mahmoud Darwish
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For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.
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
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I wish I were a candle in the darkness.
Mahmoud Darwish
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My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller
Mahmoud Darwish
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May poetry and God's name have mercy on us!
Mahmoud Darwish
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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.
Mahmoud Darwish
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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
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My love, I fear the silence of your hands.
Mahmoud Darwish
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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.
Mahmoud Darwish
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Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?
Mahmoud Darwish
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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.
Mahmoud Darwish
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History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.
Mahmoud Darwish
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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.
Mahmoud Darwish