I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home.

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

Give birth to me from a grain of wheat, not from a wound. Give birth to me and take me back to a world before meaning, so I can embrace you on the grass. Do you hear me?

Pain does not see and cannot be seen: it is the nothing growing full.

And what I don’t understand I grasp it only when it’s too late.

Dreams will find their dreamers and all a dreamer has to do is remember.

She does not love you. Your metaphors thrill her, you are her poet. But that’s all there’s to it.

I love talking to you, even if I have nothing to say.

Time is a smooth river for the one who does not notice it, and fierce and brutal for the one who gazes at it and is snatched by the abyss.

I have the fury to love. My heart so weak is mad. What to do there? Oh, let it be!

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

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

My homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveller.

I’ve built my homeland, I’ve even founded my state – in my language.

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

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.

I wish I were a candle in the darkness.

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.

I see poetry as spiritual medicine.

Standing here, c, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be.

The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.

My love, I fear the silence of your hands.

I never wanted children; maybe I’m afraid of responsibility.

On this earth there is that which deserves life.

History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.

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.

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.

Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.

Palestinian people are in love with life.

For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.

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

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

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.

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

I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don’t hate Jews.

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

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

When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.

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

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

Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.

We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.

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.

We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.

Nothing is harder on the soul, than the smell of dreams, while they’re evaporating.

The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.

My homeland is a poem that will never be silenced.

Love is an endless horizon.

Words are our only homeland.

The heart’s geography is as vast as the sky.

We are all travelers seeking solace in the land of dreams.

Home is a scent on the breath of a breeze.

A land without myths is like a sky without stars.

The birds came daily to salute the grief of a poet who failed to understand the source of his sadness.

In the face of darkness, we are the light.

The true prison is the one within our minds.

I write to remember, and I write to forget.

My homeland is a book written in the language of the heart.

Our roots are deep, and our branches reach for the sky.

We will rise like the sun, no matter how dark the night.

In the face of injustice, silence is betrayal.

I will not be silenced; my words will echo through time.

Hope is the key to every locked door.

My homeland is a song that never stops singing.

I am a poet; my words are my weapon.

I carry my homeland in my heart, wherever I go.

I belong to the land, and the land belongs to me.

My homeland is a poem that cannot be erased.

In my country, words are more powerful than bullets.

My blood is a song; listen to it in the veins of my people.

The stars above us are our destiny.

Nothing is more beautiful than the beauty of freedom.

My heart is a rose, blossoming on the land of my ancestors.

Freedom is like poetry. It does not mean anything unless you live it.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living.

Every time I plant a tree, I plant myself.

I am the lover and I am the beloved.

You can imprison a man, but not an idea.

Nothing is lost in this world, except for seeds.

The sea is behind me. I am in front of myself.

On the last day of the war, I died.

I am a window. I want the wind to love me.

I am one of those who burn with their wounds.

We are a people of words. We are not responsible for your ignorance of us.

We are people with wings, lost among the birds.

As long as I have the power to dream, I will dream of returning.

We have a country of words. Speak, speak so I can put my road on the stone of a stone.

On this land, there is what deserves life.

I am the voice of the voiceless, the hope of the hopeless.

My pen is my sword, and my words are my shield.

Every river and it has its spring, stream, and life, my friend

Without hope we are lost.

I am not afraid of death; I am afraid of a life without meaning

In every tear, a story unfolds.

And I tell myself, a moon will rise from my darkness.

My soul is light and my body is heavy with memories and place

We were born to be free, not to be slaves

The enemy is the occupation, not the people.