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

Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.'

A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare.

To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.

I love being middle-aged in general. I'm more at peace with myself now. I still have tormented times, but they are few and far between. You don't feel you have to be the centre of your world when you get older. Becoming a mother had been a turning point which stopped me from being the centre of my world.

There can't be real peace without improving the integration of Arab society and making it part of the political game.

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.