Suheir Hammad Quotes

#1. Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.

Suheir Hammad

#2. I do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill.
I have never been so hungry that I willed hunger.
I have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen.
Not really. Even as a woman, as a Palestinian, as a broken human being.
Never this broken.

Suheir Hammad

#3. I came from a traditional immigrant family where education meant there were only a few valid paths: doctor or lawyer - and I didn't want to be either one.

Suheir Hammad

#4. War and tooth enameled
salted lemon childhoods
All colors run, none of us solid
Don't look for shadow behind me
I carry it within
I live cycles of light and darkness

Suheir Hammad

#5. In the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will have to bury children, and support themselves through grief.

Suheir Hammad

#6. I cried when i saw those
buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart.

Suheir Hammad

#7. The machine will grind you down, but the machine is not bigger than the imagination. Rome fell in a day. We know this.

Suheir Hammad

#8. I will dance and resist and dance and persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than death.

Suheir Hammad

#9. I think of feminism as a socially just and imaginative world.

Suheir Hammad

#10. Writing must always have intention because words have power.

Suheir Hammad

#11. I am so old-fashioned. I've never lived with a man. I am completely about the independence of paying my own rent.

Suheir Hammad

#12. I will not dance to your war drum!

Suheir Hammad

#13. Do not fear what has blown up. If you must, fear the unexploded.

Suheir Hammad

#14. A woman will tell you
every home she has ever inhabited
has been broken into
starting with her body

Suheir Hammad

#15. I've read too many books to believe what I am told.

Suheir Hammad

#16. Life is a right, not collateral or casual.

Suheir Hammad