The Most Beautiful Writings of Nizar Qabbani
- Enough with the hypocrisy. What is the use of all this embracing when we have already ended, and all the stories we had told are mere hypocrisy?
- All I know about my feelings is that you, my love, are my beloved, and that one who loves does not think.
- No exile can dispel my loneliness as long as my great exile resides within me.
- Our words in love kill our love; the letters die when spoken.
- Be an legend for once; be a mirage; be a question in my mouth that has no answer.
- I cannot free myself from you, nor can I liberate myself from myself.
- Don’t ask me: How am I? If you truly love me, ask: How are my fingers?
- Nothing surprises me anymore; I have always known you to be a coward.
- A person does not know how to live in this homeland or how to die in it.
- The Jews did not enter through our borders; instead, they seeped in like ants through our flaws.
- Why is it only you, among all women, who change the architecture of my life and the rhythm of my days?
- If I were to tell the sea how I feel about you, it would leave its shores, shells, and fish to follow me.
- Without the love within us, humanity would cease to be human.
- We have lost, and we remain scattered tribes living off deep-seated hatred and seeking revenge.
- Did you feel the magnificence of the things I say when I say nothing at all?
- Can the river change its course?
- And please count the veins of your hand; your veins soothe me, while the threads of gray here and there stress me out.
- Patience has no patience, sleep does not sleep, and the clock on the wall, from its astonishment, made the days slip away.
- When we are together on the road and by chance you take my arm, I feel, my friend, something profound.
- I have promised repeatedly, and I have decided to resign many times, yet I do not remember actually resigning.
- The greatness of a poet is measured by their ability to evoke wonder.
- And how can I escape from it? It is my destiny. Can the river change its course?
- Between autumn and winter, there is a season I call the season of weeping; during this time, the soul is closest to the heavens.
- Oh, my only love, do not cry, for your tears carve into my being; I have nothing in this world except for your eyes… and my sorrows.
- Oh Jerusalem, city fragrant with prophets, the shortest path between earth and sky; oh Jerusalem, beacon of laws, beautiful child with burnt fingers, sad are your eyes, city of the Virgin, shaded oasis where the Messenger passed, the stones of the streets are sad, the minarets of the mosques are sad; oh Jerusalem, you who are clothed in black.
- Poetry is about bringing forth the unexpected.
- Poetry is elevated speech created by humans to transform the human experience.
- There are not many choices for poetry; it must either be with people or against them. Poetry that stands in between has no value.
- There is no free or random element in poetry.
- There is but one culture— the culture of strength. When I am strong, people respect my culture; when I am weak, I fall, and my culture falls with me. When Rome was strong militarily, Latin reigned supreme among languages; when the Roman Empire fell, Latin became a plate of spaghetti. Culture, my lady, is not in the number of books I read but in the number of bullets I fire.
- I told him: O Sultan, you lost the war twice because you became detached from the cause of humanity.
- The culture that fears an attack from a neighbor’s cat is a culture of rats.
- Seek the sun that I have hidden within me if you truly know women.
- Oh woman, who holds the heart in your hands, I ask you by God not to leave me, for what would I be if you were not here?
- How deeply I love you that even my own soul wonders; poetry dwells in the gardens of your eyes, and without your eyes, no poetry would be written.
- Do you still love me after all that has happened? I love you despite everything that has been; I do not intend to stir your past, my only concern is that you are here, now.
- Do you see how the candles light up for us? From their glow, we burn; I fear for the small hope that it will die and suffocate.
- I loved her to the bone… to the point of oblivion.
- I miss you; teach me not to miss you, teach me how to uproot your love from my depths.
- Fill my pockets with stars and build a seat for me upon the sun.
- I am aware of the pain that spoken words leave behind, and I know the more profound pain left by unspoken words.
- The greatest poets are those who wrote just one line of poetry and died right after.
- The most tormenting aspect of language for me is that it is not enough for you, and what frustrates me about writing is that it cannot adequately capture you.
- To me, a revolution must be all-encompassing; otherwise, it does not exist.
- Love on earth is merely a product of our imagination; if we do not find it here, we will invent it.
- A true writer is one who rises from the specific to the universal, from the part to the whole, from the shell to the sea.
- Hatred cannot conceive or bring forth life.
- The revolver is the greatest writer of our time.
- Dividing God is the only scientific solution to satisfy all factions.
- The letters die when they are uttered.
- I am a thousand times in love with you; so stay away from me… from my fire and smoke, for I possess nothing in this world but your eyes… and my sorrows.
- I love you beyond what the imagination can stray, beyond passion… and beyond longing.
- I am, as you have always known me, immersed in poetry; otherwise, I do not wish to be.
- I am compelled to love you until I understand the distinction between myself and a stone.
- You are the sweetest illusion in my life, and those who chase illusions wear themselves out.
- They want to open the world while they are incapable of opening a book.
- I am like a lamp on the road; my friend, I cry, and no one sees my tears.
- I do not believe in love that does not carry the fervor of revolutionaries, that does not break every wall, that does not strike like a storm.
- Oh, sacred land of holy books devoid of sanctity, and oh land of prophecies that consumed all its prophets.
- Some love cannot be postponed.
- Historically, I have no history; I am the oblivion of forgetfulness, I am an anchor that cannot anchor, a wound with the features of a human.
- A dream from dreams cannot be spoken of or interpreted.
- Playfully every evening, whisper my number and chant like the sparrows of the vineyards; a word from you, even false, built me a house above the stars.
- Thousands will love you after me, and you will receive letters of longing, but you will not find a man after me who loves you with such sincerity.
- Thank you for the time of crying, for the long nights of wakefulness… thank you for the beautiful sorrow.
- They stabbed Arabism in the dark with a dagger, and behold, they became Jews among the Jews.
- Thus, experience is a prerequisite for writing, and a writer who does not suffer cannot convey their suffering to others.
- Within you is something of the unknown; immerse it, and within you is something of history and fate.
- In it lies the virtues of prophets, and in it lies the blasphemy of the unbelievers, the innocence of children, and the cruelty of savages.
- They fought for us until they were slain, and we remained in our cafés like the spit of an oyster.
- A little silence, oh ignorant one, for the most beautiful of all these talks are the conversations of your hands on the table.
- Tell me, doesn’t the color of the world entice you to return? The birds have come to the nests.
- They watched the fingers of my right hand, thinking that the fingers of the poet are five rivers flowing with milk and honey.