"When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book."

"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."

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

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

"I think I'm a bit less inhibited, and not thinking too much before speaking. It's not about being shameful, I'm just a bit more unabashedly myself because of this thing, and it probably started at age 15. I can be around people and say what I think without fear."

"Where compassion abides, fear and resentment lose their dominion. This remains the cornerstone of personal mastery."

"Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old."

"There is a fear of emotion in tennis."