Nazim Hikmet Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

Welcome baby
it's your turn to live
they're laying for you chicken pox whooping cough smallpox
malaria TB heart disease cancer and so on
unemployment hunger and so on
train wrecks bus accidents plane crashes on-the-job injuries
earthquakes floods droughts and so on
heartbreak alcoholism and so on
nightsticks prisons doors and so on
they're laying for you the atom bomb and so on
welcome baby
it's your turn to live
they're laying for you socialism communism and so on.

Nazim Hikmet
The world's not run by governments or money
but people rule
a hundred years from now
maybe
but it will be for sure.

Nazim Hikmet
Separation isn't time or distance
it's the bridge between us
finer than silk thread sharper than swords

Nazim Hikmet
I'm twenty-seven,
she's seventeen.
"Blind Cupid,
lame Cupid,
both blind and lame Cupid
said, Love this girl,"

Nazim Hikmet
You're my bondage and my freedom,
my flesh burning like a naked summer night,
you're my country.
Hazel eyes marbled green,
you're awesome, beautiful, and brave,
you're my desire always just out of reach.

Nazim Hikmet
Looking at this insolent earth,
you hear the first battle cry of our species-
trap it under a rock
and together, screaming, attack
and destroy it, as if killing a mammoth.

Nazim Hikmet
I've never regretted I was born too soon.
I'm proud to be
a child of the twentieth century.
I'm satisfied
to join its ranks
on our side
and fight for a new world...

Nazim Hikmet
My country or the stars
Or my youth, what's farthest?

Nazim Hikmet
Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
and so blue
and so vast
I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall.
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil, the sun and me...
I feel joyful and how.

Nazim Hikmet
At eighteen you don't think about memories,
you tell them.

Nazim Hikmet
All I wrote about us is lies
All I wrote about us is the truth

Nazim Hikmet
It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

Nazim Hikmet
Because of you, each day is a melon slice
smelling sweetly of earth
Because of you, all fruits reach out to me
as if I were the sun.
Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope.
You are the reason my heart beats.
Because of you, even my loneliest nights
smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall.
Should my journey end before I reach my city,
I've rested in a rose garden thanks to you.
Because of you I don't let death enter,
clothed in the softest garments,
and knocking on my door with songs
calling me to the greatest place.

Nazim Hikmet
At eighteen the heart shoots like a pebble from a slingshot
and the head doesn't sit on the shoulder.

Nazim Hikmet
The strangest of our powers
Is the courage to live
Knowing that we will die,
Knowing nothing more true.

Nazim Hikmet