Naomi Shihab Nye

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Anyone who says, __ere__ my address,write me a poem,_ deserves something in reply.So I__l 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.

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.

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.

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.