• If it weren’t for the moon, I would’ve become an orphan before my time.
• We long to practice our humanity in a place of our own.
• — Is it the lost paradise then?

— Beware of this expression, because to believe it would be to surrender to a state of being that has reached its legal and existential limits. The difference between a lost paradise in its absolute sense and the lost paradise in its Palestinian meaning is that the former understanding would keep the condition of longing, and psychological and rightful belonging, out of the sphere of the conflict. As long as the struggle continues, the paradise is not lost but remains occupied and subject to being regained.

• The idea of the lost paradise is tempting to those who are not possessed by a pressing question, but inflicts upon the Palestinian condition an accumulation of tears and weakness in the blood. This is how my homeland surpasses Paradise: it is like Paradise, but it is also attainable.
• the conquerors must never be far from our awareness when we indulge in internal squabbles.
• — When shall we meet again?

— When you tap on the wall of my chest and jump out to sit facing me as you usually do. But I beg you to keep your visits to a minimum. — Are you going to kill me? — When a person kills his childhood he commits suicide. And I have need of you as witness to a generation. Don’t come back often, for ugliness fills the cities, and many of my friends are dying these days.

• To be content is not enough because contentment does not bring about change or blow anything up, and the wasteland is immense.
• When you find yourself canceling me out of my being, and when I insist on keeping it, the relationship between you and me becomes one of conflict. Not because I object to your being or to the possibility of a shared existence, but because I object to the negation of my being that arises from the way you carry on with yours.
• When the guns are silent, don’t I have the right to feel hungry?
• I taught you to smoke. And you taught me the companionship of smoke.
• She used to sing a lot, and I didn’t understand her songs except in dreams.
• Is the sea not capable of granting them a single moment of innocence and affection so that they can forget about you for a moment? How can human beings feel hate while they are stretched out on the sand?
• Dear Mother, I’m still a child! I want to carry my sorrows and run with them to your bosom. I want to close the distance so you can hold me while I cry.
• Sometimes they arrest you while you are committing a dream.
• The trial of the killers then began, after the victims had been found guilty!
• It was Moshe Smilansky who said that Jewish nationalism in Palestine was built on a military egotism that believes in violence and is as far away from human considerations as it can be.
• They taught you to be wary of happiness because it hurts when it betrays.
• “If they were to give you everything you wanted, could you guarantee your happiness?”
• Poetry speaks truth, but does not announce it.
• “I wish despair for you, my love, that you may excel, for the desperate are creative. Don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for anyone. Wait for the thought; don’t wait for the thinker. Wait for the poem; don’t wait for the poet. Wait for the revolution; don’t wait for the revolutionary. The thinker may be wrong, the poet may lie, and the revolutionary may get tired. This is the despair I mean.”
• You did not embrace any shadows; therefore you have nothing to regret.
• And Palestine sleeps on the shores of distant rivers. It does not bathe in water but in the blood of the future.
• Enter into the happiness, and burst.
• I want nothing from the world except to move the knife away from my throat.
• We have not seen a hangman yet who tries to gain the affection of his victim by giving them a part in the production of the rope.