Naomi Shihab Nye Quotes

Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.So I’ll tell a secret instead:poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,they are sleeping. They are the shadowsdrifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to dois live in a way that lets us find them.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I'm like the weather, never really can predict when this rain cloud's gonna burst; when it's the high or it's the low, when you might need a light jacket.Sometimes I'm the slush that sticks to the bottom of your work pants, but I can easily be the melting snowflakes clinging to your long lashes.I know that some people like:sunny and seventy-five,sunny and seventy-five,sunny and seventy-five,but you take me as I am and neverforget to pack an umbrella.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

you will never catch up.Walk around feeling like a leafknow you could tumble at any second.Then decide what to do with your time.--The Art of Disappearing

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

The person you have known a long tme is embedded in you like a jewel. The person you have just met casts out a few glistening beams & you are fascinated to see more of them. How many more are there? With someone you've barely met the curiosity is intoxicating.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

No one lives in these regionsof rock and sun. It is a lucky part of the world; to grow old without buildings and roadways, to dissolve quietly without feeling stunned.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Getting over what you did to me is not why I get out of bed anymore.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of wordsand not one of them can save me.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Let me peer out at the worldthrough your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder,or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.)Let me see how your blueis my turquoise and my orangeis your gold. Suddenly binarystars, we have startlinggravity. Let's comparescintillation - let's sharestarlight.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

only kindness that raises its headfrom the crowd of the world to sayit is I you have been looking for,and then goes with you everywherelike a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

like our parents alwaystold us not to likefirefighters warn againstwe're playinggames and makingthe rules upas we go we'rematchingwarmth to warmthstarting fires burningwishes into ourskin we're hiddenholdingforbidden lightswe're childrenwhose fathers havenever taught nevertouchbut we're findingthese new flameswe smotherat the sound of footsteps.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

My father was very disappointed by war and fighting. And he thought language could help us out of cycles of revenge and animosity. And so, as a journalist, he always found himself asking lots of questions and trying to gather information. He was always very clear to underscore the fact that Jewish people and Arab people were brother and sister.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye