Naomi Shihab Nye Quotes

Quotes about:

• There is a place to stand where you can see so many lights you forget you are one of them.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Light, Forget You, Forget

  Naomi Shihab Nye, “Spruce Street, Berkeley”

  51 Copy quote

• Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Abundance, Shimmer, Pauses

  52 Copy quote

• If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Beautiful, Teacher, Writing

  45 Copy quote

• Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Kindness, Sorrow, Knows

  Naomi Shihab Nye (1995). “Words under the words: selected poems”, The Eighth Mountain Press

  60 Copy quote

• Sometimes there’s no one to listen to what you really might like to say at a certain moment. The paper always listens.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Paper, Might, Sometimes

  23 Copy quote

• ... the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Real, Hero, Race

  39 Copy quote

• Being alive is a common road. It's what we notice makes us different.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Different, Alive, Common

  13 Copy quote

• Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Stars, Blue, Orange

  Naomi Shihab Nye (2010). “Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets under 25”, p.28, Harper Collins

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Book, Reading

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  Meaningful, Perspective, Poetry

  22 Copy quote

• This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  World, Want

  29 Copy quote

• I want to be famous 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.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Heart, Soul, Mind

  Naomi Shihab Nye (1995). “Words under the words: selected poems”, The Eighth Mountain Press

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Lonely, Long, Stories

  Naomi Shihab Nye (2009). “I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven”, p.3, Harper Collins

  35 Copy quote

• I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Stronger, Flaws, Shock

  26 Copy quote

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

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Dream, Fire, Hands

  Naomi Shihab Nye (1995). “Words under the words: selected poems”, The Eighth Mountain Press

  17 Copy quote

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

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Writing, Sleep, Shoes

  "Valentine for Ernest Mann". Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952.

  27 Copy quote

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

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Coats, Heavy, Be Good

  Naomi Shihab Nye (2008). “Habibi”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Travel, Jewels, Long

  38 Copy quote

• If someday, in a morning, you see you, in a mirror or the dent of a spoon, and wonder Where is my soul and Where has it gone, remember this: Catch the gaze of a woman on the metro, subway, tram. Look at a man. Seek and you will find you in the silvered space, a flash between souls.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Morning, Men, Mirrors

  26 Copy quote

• The hands are churches that worship the world.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Hands, Church, World

  Naomi Shihab Nye (1995). “Words under the words: selected poems”, The Eighth Mountain Press

  11 Copy quote

• Where we live in the world is never one place. Our hearts, those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us moons before we are ready for them.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Heart, Moon, Mirrors

  Naomi Shihab Nye (1994). “Red Suitcase: Poems”, p.41, BOA Editions, Ltd.

  22 Copy quote

• maybe we try too hard to be remembered, waking to the glowing yellow disc in ignorance, swearing that today will be the day, today we will make something of our lives. what if we are so busy searching for worth that we miss the sapphire sky and cackling blackbird. what else is missing? maybe our steps are too straight and our paths too narrow and not overlapping. maybe when they overlap someone in another country lights a candle, a couple resolves their argument, a young man puts down his silver gun and walks away.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Country, Couple, Ignorance

  9 Copy quote

• Energy is everything. Rubbing happy and sad together creates energy.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Together, Energy

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Morning, Home, Might

  29 Copy quote

• I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late-there's that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantimePoetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Space, Things I Love, Gaps

  17 Copy quote

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