Quotes from Naomi Shihab Nye

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

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

Apparently people commonly died when their loved ones were out of the room. Bathroom break. Quick trip down to the cafeteria for a grilled cheese. It was easier to die if you didn't have family members to worry about at that exact moment. Easier for the one who was dying, maybe.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does. Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

The days are nouns: touch them The hands are churches that worship the world

like our parents always told us not to like firefighters warn against we're playing games and making the rules up as we go we're matching warmth to warmth starting fires burning wishes into our skin we're hidden holding forbidden lights we're children whose fathers have never taught never touch but we're finding these new flames we smother at the sound of footsteps.

Every day is a poetry day.

For you who came so far; for you who held out, wearing a black scarf to signify grief; for you who believe true love can find you amidst this atlas of tears linking one town to its own memory of mortar, when it was still a dream to be built and people moved there, believing, and someone with sky and birds in his heart said this would be a good place for a park.

Why should it be any surprise that people find solace in the most intimate literary genre? Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details. We need poetry for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it more successfully than any news channel we could name.

I think of a poem as being deeper than headline news.

The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.

You're just setting yourself up for pain and anguish if you do something like that. But pain and anguish were everywhere anyway. Might as well put them to good use.

Sometimes a bus ride was all it took to feel better.

from Famous I want to be famous the 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.

those whom we did not know think they know us now.

I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side cafe, dealing dominoes like magical charms.

I have slept so many times you might think I would really be awake by now

We walked where the ancient pier juts into the sea. Stood on the rim of the pool, by the circle of black boulders. No one saw we were there and everyone who had ever been there stood silently in air. Where else do we ever have to go, and why?

Are people the only holy land?

When allowed to return to the class, your feelings of humility and lonesomeness will render you a much finer student and person.

I wondered stony afternoons owning all their vastness.

Answer, if you hear the words under the words- otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.

In these evenings he sat by our beds weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.

If you could be anyone, would you choose to be yourself?