Baillie Martin > Baillie's Quotes

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. ”
― William S. Burroughs

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Selected Poetry

“Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. ”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Because my love for you is beyond words, I decided to shut up.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“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.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“This is my last letter
There will be no others.
This is the last grey cloud
That will rain on you,
After this, you will never again
Know the rain.
This is the last drop of wine in my cup
There will be no more drunkenness.

This is the last letter of madness,
The last letter of childhood.
After me you will no longer know
The purity of youth
The beauty of madness.
I have loved you
Like a child running from school
Hiding birds and poems
In his pockets.
With you I was a child of
Hallucinations,
Distractions,
Contradictions,
I was a child of poetry and nervous writing.
As for you,
You were a woman of Eastern ways
Waiting for her fate to appear
In the lines of the coffee cups.

How miserable you are, my lady,
After today
You won't be in the blue notebooks,
In the pages of the letters,
In the cry of the candles,
In the mailman's bag.
You won't be
Inside the children's sweets
In the colored kites.
You won't be in the pain of the letters
In the pain of the poems.
You have exiled yourself
From the gardens of my childhood
You are no longer poetry.”
― Nizar Qabbani, Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts

“When a man is in love
how can he use old words?
Should a woman
desiring her lover
lie down with
grammarians and linguists?

I said nothing
to the woman I loved
but gathered
love's adjectives into a suitcase
and fled from all languages.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“In the end, forgetting is nothing but turning a page in the book of life. It may seem an easy matter, but as long as you can’t tear it, you will keep on stumbling upon it between each season of your life.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“The two years
You were my lover
Are the two most important pages
In the book of modern love.
All the pages before and after
Were blank.
These pages
Are the lines of the equator
Passing between your lips and mine
They are the measures of time
That are used
To set the clocks of the world.”
― Nizar Qabbani, Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts

“Your departure is not a tragedy:
I am like a willow tree
That always dies
While standing.”
― Nizar Qabbani, Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts

“I hadn't told them about you,
But they saw you bathing in my eyes.
I hadn't told them about you,
But they saw you in my written words.
The perfume of love cannot be concealed.”
― Nizar Qabbani, Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts

“All words
In the dictionaries, letters, and novels
Died.
I want to discover
A way to love you
Without words.”
― Nizar Qabbani, Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts

“When I wiped you from the book of memory, I did not know I was striking out half my life”
― Nizar Qabbani

“A tragedy when a mature mind and a romantic heart are in the same body”
― Nizar Qabbani

“Not everything in the heart can be said, so god created sighs, tears, long sleep, cold smile and shivering hands.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“I throw my passport in the sea, And name you my country
I throw all of my dictionaries in the fire, and name you my language”
― Nizar Qabbani

“Oh, my love
If you were at the level of my madness,
You would cast away your jewelry,
Sell all your bracelets,
And sleep in my eyes.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“Your feet on the carpet
are the shape and stance
of poetry.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“They see that giving birth to a man is hope, and giving birth to a woman is a disappointment, although every man's dream is a woman and every woman's disappointment is a man.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“I loved many before you, and I'll see many after you, and I met many when I was with you, but you are outside of the geometry of repetition.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“they asked "do you love her to death?"

i said "speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“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.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence

“And if happiness should surprise you again, do not mention its previous betrayal.
Enter into the happiness, and burst.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, يوميات الحزن العادي

“The wars will end and the leaders will shake hands, and that old woman will remain waiting for her martyred son, and that girl will wait for her beloved husband, and the children will wait for their heroic father, I do not know who sold the homeland but I know who paid the price.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“You won't find the same person twice, not even in the same person.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“Do not be absent for too long, then come and ask about how I am, details die with time and stories change.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“All roads lead to you, even those I took to forget you.”
― Mahmoud Darwish