Naomi Shihab Nye Quotes

He felt it was his job not to forget where he came from. No one else in his class had ever seen Oman. No one else had held a falcon. Sometimes he felt as if Oman were living inside his own body, like blood, like bones, it seemed so close. (p211)

why, out of all the talk, do you remember that thing?

I always took writing as being a way of thinking.

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

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

Voices as guides, lines and stanzas as rooms, sometimes a single word the furniture on which to sit...each day we could open the door, and enter, and be found. These days I wonder-was life always strange-just strange in different ways? Does speaking some of the strangeness help us survive it, even if we can't solve or change it?

Teaching and writing are separate, but serve/feed one another in so many ways. Writing travels the road inward, teaching, the road out – helping OTHERS move inward

People I read a lot to my son were people like Robert Bly and Lucille Clifton, Frank O’Hara for some reason, Chinese poems, Japanese poems.

I've always felt there was a song right around us all the time. When people are missing that, they need to wake up. They need to find their poetry where they are.

I would strongly suggest that bicultural families such as mine teach their children both languages from the beginning if they can.

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.

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 story? Usually I have found when you ask someone to do that, you end up feeling closer to them, even if their story in no way mirrors yours. Find a better thing to do.

Each thing gives us something else...The more any of us writes, the more our words will "come to us." If we trust in the words and their own mysterious relationships with one another, they will help us find things out.

So how can we continue to help-be tuning forks in some way? I guess that's the job of writers. We're tuning forks. We strike a note and it's not what we sing, so much, just that we strike this note-and then that note resonates in someone else's life, maybe they hear a harmonious note in their own lives.

When you drove out in the country, you felt closer to the earth than you felt in the city. You had better thoughts in the country. Your thoughts made falcon moves, dipping and rippling, swooping back into your brain to land. Maybe the motion of spinning wheels relaxed and enlivened them. Your thoughts weren't tied to one spot, and they weren't nervous, either. They were just open, and rolling. Maybe this was why some people decided to travel all of their lives, going to new places, not knowing what they would see next. (p211)