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

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
Siege
Occupation
Poetry
Inspiration
Good

More quotes by 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.
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My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller
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Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.
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The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands.
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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.
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Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.
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One day, I will be a poet. Water will depend on my visions.
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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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I wish I were a candle in the darkness.
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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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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.
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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.
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I see poetry as spiritual medicine.
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Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?
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Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.
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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.
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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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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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For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.
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... For me it is essential, essential for the poet to have a new toast, new songs.
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