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. No matter what job you do, we all have a much different life than our parents had. My parents' generation had one job and then they retired. Now, people have many different jobs.

Kate Walsh

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. The discrepancy between what actually happened and the version of what happened provided by sources is an enormous gray area.

Edward Jay Epstein

#7. You get what you reward. Be clear about what you want to get and systematically reward it.

Bob Nelson

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

Suheir Hammad

#9. All good animals have secret lives.

Kate Bernheimer

#10. The ocean asks for nothing but those who stand by her shores gradually attune themselves to her rhythm.

Charles Dickens

#11. I'm not a smuggler, I'm a missionary. I have chosen to be obedient and not turn away from danger. So when government says, 'No!', I said, 'wait a minute', God said, 'Go!', so I didn't listen to the 'No!'

Andrew Van Der Bijl

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

Suheir Hammad

#13. 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

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

Suheir Hammad

#15. A wee bit of heaven drifted down from above, a handful of happiness, a heart full of love.

Helen Steiner Rice

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

Suheir Hammad

#17. For me, it's just a pleasure to be out in the community wearing my Ducks logo on shirts and hats and so forth in representing the team.

Henry Samueli

#18. I hate to play a tournament in which I'm not contending. It's just not any fun for me.

Phil Mickelson

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

Suheir Hammad

#20. 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

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

Suheir Hammad

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

Suheir Hammad

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

Suheir Hammad

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

Suheir Hammad

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

Suheir Hammad

#26. I don't know if that's a year's bad luck, or if that's how it works. But stealing a Christmas tree - that can't be a good thing, karma-wise.

Adrian McKinty