The Jew is born as free as the wind, as indomitable as the Judean desert. Why did he mark the boundaries of his homeland so carelessly that it was nearly taken from him? Because for a long time he believed that the Promised Land is, first and foremost, the land where there’s no wall to keep him from seeing farther than his cries can carry.

But how can I accept blindness in order to be happy? How can a man turn his back on himself without coming face-to-face with his own negation? You can’t water a flower with one hand and pluck it with the other. When you put a rose in a vase, you don’t restore its charm; you denature it. You think you’re beautifying your room, but in fact, all you’re doing is disfiguring your garden.

Life has rules, Omar, and without some of them, humanity would return to the Stone Age.

If you want your life to be a small part of eternity, to be lucid even in the heart of madness, love... Love with all your strength, love as though it is all you know how to do, love enough to make the gods themselves jealous... for it is in love that all ugliness reveals its beauty.

Was I happy after that? I think so. I experienced moments of pleasure, moments of unforgettable joy; I loved again and dreamed again like a wide-eyed boy. And yet I always felt there was something missing, something that left me somehow crippled, in short that I only every hovered on the fringes of happiness.

The three of us, each paralyzed in his own silence, contemplate the horizon, which the dawn lights up with a thousand fires; and each of us knows for certain that the rising sun of this day, like all those that have gone before it, will be incapable of bringing sufficient light into the hearts of men.

The can take everything you own- your property, your best years, all your joys, all your good works, everything down to your last shirt- but you’ll always have your dreams, so you can reinvent your stolen world.

When you can’t find a remedy for your pain, you look for someone to blame.

I stayed at the port until the dawn broke, leaning over the railing, unable to reconcile myself to the idea that something that had never really begun was truly over.

This land does not belong to you. It belongs to that ancient shepherd whose ghost is standing next to you, though you refuse to see it. Since you do not know how to share, take your vineyards and your bridges, your paved roads and your railway tracks, your cities and your gardens and give back what remains to its rightful owners”.