Quotes from Naomi Shihab Nye

He's mourning his son, number 3000 American dead in Iraq, but as far as he can feel, the worst one.

From Why I could not accept your invitation Forgive me. Culture is everything right now. But I cannot pretend a scrap of investment in the language that allows human beings to kill one another systematically, abstractly, distantly. The language wrapped around 37,000, or whatever the number is today, dead and beautiful bodies thrown into holes without any tiny, reasonable goodbye.

It is difficult to predict what our finest moments will be, but we know when they happen.

You are the witness, on-the-scene, microphone in hand. You stand on the road to everywhere, askng, What is this? What next?

My infinity would be/ the never-ending light/ you deserve/ every road opening up in front of you

People do not die./ They die/ And then they stay.

Procrastination is the most creative act there is.

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

Work on what you love, your needs will be met.   No

No test can measure anything important.   On

I realized that I travel too much on the day I began tidying an airport as if it were my bedroom.

Poetry is everything that headline news is not.

Last year we thought this year would be better and this year last year looks pretty good.

Each morning he begs his parents not to read the newspaper, knowing how their faces go half-blank and mad

so many things frowned upon in the early days that shaped us

the years we never thought would stick to us have stuck now we are as old as people in the stories

Last night I dreamed—blessed illusion— that I had a beehive here in my heart and that the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. — Naomi Shihab Nye, Honeybee: Poems (HarperCollins, 2009)

as a boy stands back from his earlier self mocking it and the light of fireflies blinking against an old fence has become as sad as it is lovely because so many hands are gone by now it is not that we wanted the light to be caught      but reached for that was it

All our roots go deep down, even if they're tangled

And didn't we pledge, pledge, pledge, palms on our chests, every day we lived, pledge to the one nation, the freedom we believed in, didn't we? Fat lot of good.

Maybe it's our duty to be shaped a hundred times by the same stories. We think we're telling them but really they're keeping us alive

This is one of the many things Americans don't understand about Iraq. Kill a member of the tribe, the whole tribe now hates you. How could they not? The Americans think they hate you today, thank you tomorrow.

Freedom will feel good to you too. Please acknowledge our higher purpose.

Grief is an ambush. You're walking along feeling fine, look down, see a leaf, and begin to weep. —Jack