The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Naomi Shihab Nye

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.

Life, Confidence, Great

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.

Experience, Know, You

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.

Sister, Father, Brother

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

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

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

comfort, memories, words, you

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

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.

books, literature, reading, words

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.

books, literature, reading, words

Naomi Shihab Nye

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

heartbreak, strength

Naomi Shihab Nye

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

Naomi Shihab Nye

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