Quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

“I hope you feel as I do that it wouldn't be that hard for the United States to have two friends. You know, to have only one good friend seems like the dark side of junior high school. Every time Pr...”

“I have always thought about how stupid and boring violence seems in this world where we could just listen to more stories instead, right? We could ask people who trouble us, Could you tell me your ...”

“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 all out...”

“Here at home, the night belonged to the moon. Electricity was rationed, three hours each evening.”

“Suheila commented that people argued most where there was least to talk about. If conversation was rich and subjects many, talk kept rolling fluidly, passing over rough spots like water over rocks....”

“Sometimes it works to fight logic with logic and craziness with craziness. This truth, however, cannot be depended on.”

“I kept thinking, as did millions of other people, what can we do? Writers, believers in words, could not give up words when the going got rough. I found myself, as millions did, turning to poetry. ...”

“I keep thinking, we teach children to use language to solve their disputes. We teach them not to hit and fight and bite. Then look what adults do!”

“The things that cause you friction are the things from which you might make art. Surely losing is one of the most endemic frictions of our journey.”

“I can't stop believing human beings everywhere hunger for deeper-than-headline news about one another. Poetry and art are some of the best ways this heartfelt news may be exchanged.”

“This is what I want a book of poems and paintings to be-a surprising spring waking us from our daily sleep. A feast of little dishes. An unexpected walk along the rim of a majestic city. Ahlan Wa S...”

“Tear gas canisters scattered in the fields by Israeli soldiers say, Made in Pennsylvania....I keep thinking of those signs in the United States at construction sites: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK HERE.”

“Think of it: two peoples, so closely related it's hard to tell them apart in the streets sometimes, claiming the same land. The end of the twentieth century.”

“What did exclusivity ever have to offer but a distorted, unrealistic view of the world? People who stuck only to their own kind were scared people”

“In these days when trade is an amplified word, with the images of appliances and factories and skills flying back and forth across a border, I prefer to imagine cultures trading invisible riches.”

“I suggest that blood be bigger than what we're born with, that blood keep growing and growing as we live; otherwise how will we become true citizens of the world? For twenty years, working as a vis...”

“I think of poets over the ages sending their voices out into the sky, leaving quiet, indelible trails.”

“Whenever someone suggests how much is lost in translation! I want to say, Perhaps but how much is gained! A new world of readers, for one thing.”

“On the board was written, Poetry is a wide-open field. (p183)”

“Poetry is like language soup, the taste of different flavors. Sometimes you just like the way a word sounds, pressed up against another word. She said poetry was contagious. In a good way. (p184)”