Mahmoud Darwish Quotes

History is information. Memory is part of your identity.

Cultural background surely plays a part in shaping identity; but it does not determine identity.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

One doesn't want one's identity coerced.

It's important that people understand who I am and where I come from and not just have it shaped by purely political discourse.

A people must have dignity and identity.

There are too many people around keeping me grounded to go off the rails. I'm my own person.

My life is mine to remember.

I'm a different person. I don't want to be titled as Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's daughter. I want to be thought of as Frances Cobain.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..

He who would dare to undertake to establish a nation would have to feel himself capable of altering, so to speak, human nature, to transform each individual, who by his very nature is a unique and perfect whole, into a mere part of a greater whole, from which this individual would in a sense receive his life and his being.

Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, 'Who am I?'

Nothing has been more detrimental to me than to be considered a symbol, because I never stood for any of that... The civil rights movement thought they would do me harm over the years by disassociating themselves from me. Well, nothing in the world was more to my advantage. I was never one of them... I had my own divine mission.

When people put labels on us, it doesn't always enclose everything that we are. So even though I'm proud to be Somali, I'm proud to be American, at the end of the day, I'm still Halima, and I take things from both sides and combine them, and I make my own little category. I'm me!

Somebody has always wanted me to speak as a voice of black America, but it has dawned on me that I can only speak for myself.

We must never lose our individuality.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

Never let anyone define you. You are the only person who defines you. No one can speak for you. Only you speak for you. You are your only voice.

You cant reduce me to a set of influences.

I left my fingerprints somewhere - that's good enough. I am my own person - that's good enough. I stand my ground - that's good enough.

It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.

You know, you always want to just do your own thing - I mean some people want to be exactly like their parents - Ibut I wanted to do my own thing and I ended up doing a kind of mix of my mom and dad.

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

The only person that can define you is you. Nobody else can.

I never was a person who let people who have their ideas and their expectations of me dictate who I became.