Quotes from Naomi Shihab Nye

If someday, in a morning, you see you, in a mirror or the dent of a spoon, and wonder Where is my soul and Where has it gone, remember this: Catch the gaze of a woman on the metro, subway, tram. Look at a man. Seek and you will find you in the silvered space, a flash between souls.

It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.

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

Mystery: Everything felt better before you got there than when you actually got there. When you actually got there, you didn't quite have the energy to be there.

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.

We start out as little bits of disconnected dust.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us we find poems.

only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

I'm writing mostly to thank you for living you eighty years and to tell you I love you and think of you often.

I want to be someone making music/with my coming.