Nizar Qabbani

“I do not write poetry. I write you.”

“In the summer, I stretch out on the shore and think of you. Had I told the sea what I felt for you, it would have left its shores, its shells, its fish, and followed me.”

“A woman who has no history is like a country that has no history.”

“The homeland is not a hotel that we leave when the service is bad.”

“The most dangerous woman is the one who is armed with culture.”

“I am not a hotel to be booked for a weekend.”

“Writing is a secret act. A writer is a man of secrets.”

“A woman has the right to choose her man, her life, and her death.”

“Do not love deeply, until you make sure that the other part loves you with the same depth, because the depth of your love today is the depth of your wound tomorrow.”

“Words are spoons, but it is the heart that prepares the meal.”

“The most beautiful love is the one that is impossible.”

“The age of political poetry is over. The age of sexual poetry is over. The age of ideological poetry is over. What is left is the poetry of the human being.”

“If I were to tell you that I have never been with another woman, I would be lying. But each time, I was searching for you in their bodies.”

“I want to find a country that doesn’t ask me for a passport when I’m on its soil.”

“If only they knew that the key to my heart is a song from Fairuz and a poem by Nizar.”

“My lover asks me: 'What is the difference between me and the sky?' The difference, my love, is that when you laugh, I forget about the sky.”

“I protest with my hair, with my lips, with my body. I protest with all that is me.”

“I am a man who has lived with women and for women. I have never known a cause more just than the cause of women.”

“I love you when you're angry. I love the volcano that erupts from you.”