Naomi Shihab Nye

“what twists or rage greater than we could ever guess had savaged skylines, thousands of lives?”

“We start out as little bits of disconnected dust.”

“Why should it be any surprise that people find solace in the most intimate literary genre? Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details. We need poetry for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it more successfully than any news channel we could name.”

“In these evenings he sat by our beds weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.”

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words- otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”

“For you who came so far; for you who held out, wearing a black scarf to signify grief; for you who believe true love can find you amidst this atlas of tears linking one town to its own memory of mortar, when it was still a dream to be built and people moved there, believing, and someone with sky and birds in his heart said this would be a good place for a park.”

“You will no longer pick this sage that flavors your whole life.”

“I wondered stony afternoons owning all their vastness.”

“I support all people on earth who have bodies like and unlike my body”

“those whom we did not know think they know us now.”

“the long sorrow of the color red.”

“why are we so monumentally slow?”

“our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes.”

“Skin had hope, that's what skin does. Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.”

“Are people the only holy land?”

“The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.”

“Remembering your mistakes more acutely than any minor success. This was the worst. The things that kept you up at night. Tip a waiter that was too small. The words that didn't fit the moment. Words that didn't come till to late. You could kill yourself in increments, punishing your spirit day after day-regret. Guilt. Not the guilt of the little girl who woke in the night embarrassed God was mad at her because she had ticked balls under her shirt, pretending to have breasts. "I even felt sexy." That was sweet, and pure, no crime at all. But the crime of obsessive replay-get rid of it, get rid of it. Who could ever have known that hardest punishments would be the ones you gave yourself?”

“Most days weren't clear when you were in them.”

“Or maybe his reclusiveness was a decisive marketing strategy-if you disappear, people are more interested in your work. You become a legend while you're still alive. Crouching behind a stonewall, or the post under a house...people are kneeling down to find you.”

“You're just setting yourself up for pain and anguish if you do something like that."But pain and anguish were everywhere anyway. Might as well put them to good use.”

“It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.”

“What would it be like to be a turtle inside a shell hit by hailstones?”

“Because Ali did not want to see the deep pools of his kind teacher's eyes and fall into them. He didn't know how to swim.”

“When allowed to return to the class, your feelings of humility and lonesomeness will render you a much finer student and person.”

“Apparently people commonly died when their loved ones were out of the room. Bathroom break. Quick trip down to the cafeteria for a grilled cheese. It was easier to die if you didn't have family members to worry about at that exact moment.Easier for the one who was dying, maybe.”

“Maybe when your mother died young, you became instantly old.”

“from "Famous" I want to be famous the in the way a pulley is famous,/or a buttonhole,not because it did anything spectacular,/but because it never forgot what it could do.”

“Amal, you look stunned," said Mrs. Melchor. "Have you been struck by lightning between classes?""Yes," she said. "The lightning of ignorance."Mrs. Melchor raised her eyebrows.”

“Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.”

“Boy and EggEvery few minutes, he wantsto march the trail of flattened rye grassback to the house of mutteringhens. He too could makea bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so freshit felt hot in his hand and he pressed itto his ear while the other childrenlaughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,so little yet, too forgetful in games,ready to cry if the ball brushed him,riveted to the secret of birdscaught up inside his fist,not ready to give it overto the refrigeratoror the rest of the day.”

“We walked where the ancient pier juts into the sea.Stood on the rim of the pool, by the circleof black boulders. No one saw we were thereand everyone who had ever been therestood silently in air.Where else do we ever have to go, and why?”

“We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.”

“I do think that all of us think in poems. I think of a poem as being deeper than headline news. You know how they talk about breaking news all the time, that -- if too much breaking news, trying to absorb all the breaking news, you start feeling really broken. And you need something that takes you to a place that's a little more timeless, that kind of gives you a place to stand to look out at all these things. Otherwise, you just feel assaulted by all of the tragedy in the world.”

“I think of a poem as being deeper than headline news.”

“When they say Don't I know you? say no.When they invite you to the partyremember what parties are likebefore answering.Someone telling you in a loud voicethey once wrote a poem.Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.Then reply.If they say we should get together.say why? It's not that you don't love them any more.You're trying to remember somethingtoo important to forget.Trees.The monastery bell at twilight.Tell them you have a new project.It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery storenod briefly and become a cabbage.When someone you haven't seen in ten yearsappears at the door,don't start singing him all your new songs.You will never catch up.Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.Then decide what to do with your time.”

“I am looking for the human who admits his flawsWho shocks the adversaryBy being kinder not strongerWhat would that be like?We don't even know”

“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.”

“I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side cafe, dealing dominoes like magical charms.”

“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.”

“I Still Have Everything You Gave MeIt is dusty on the edges.It is slightly rotten.I guard it without thinking.I focus on it once a yearwhen I shake it out in the wind.I do not ache.I would not trade.”

“Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.”

“Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.”

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

“Where we live in the worldis never one place. Our hearts,those dogged mirrors, keep flashing usmoons before we are ready for them.”

“Sometimes a bus ride was all it took to feel better.”

“Mystery: Everything felt better before you got there than when you actually got there. When you actually got there, you didn't quite have the energy to be there.”

“Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it al out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.”

“My mother used to tell me when I went somewhere, "Please leave your foolishness at home." But how could I do that? It was stuck on me.”

“To know the difference,you must run this mountain without pause. In the evening or the afternoon, you must cross the first fields wakingto your footsteps, stormwashed at the foothills.In the evening or the afternoon, in the closing of a shadowline, you must read aloud the reddened last words of this canyon's leaves to the trees that clap their hands.”

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