Quote

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.

Naomi Shihab Nye

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Naomi Shihab Nye
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: March 12
Poet
Teacher
University Teacher
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
Even
Stories
Suddenly
Long
Stills
Lonely
Really
Still
Somewhere
World
Littles
Friends
Find
Story
Live
Words
Syllables
Little
Language
Wrap
Hard
Around
Wraps

More quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

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I do think that all of us think in poems.
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I support all people on earth who have bodies like and unlike my body.
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We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.
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our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes.
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I want to be someone making music/with my coming.
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Read, Read, and then Read some more. Always Read. Find the voices that speak most to YOU. This is your pleasure and blessing, as well as responsibility!
Naomi Shihab Nye
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The hands are churches that worship the world.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.
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I'm not interested in who suffered the most. I'm interested in people getting over it.
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Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.
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I'm writing mostly to thank you for living you eighty years and to tell you I love you and think of you often.
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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 - it is an honor to be with others in the spirit of writing and encouragement.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know
Naomi Shihab Nye
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Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it al out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.
Naomi Shihab Nye