Quote

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

Naomi Shihab Nye

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Naomi Shihab Nye
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: March 12
Poet
Teacher
University Teacher
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
Inside
Must
Thing
Deepest
Kindness
Sorrow

More quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

Image
I keep thinking, we teach children to use language to solve their disputes. We teach them not to hit and fight and bite. Then look what adults do!
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
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
Image
Where we live in the world is never one place. Our hearts, those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us moons before we are ready for them.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
My father was very disappointed by war and fighting. And he thought language could help us out of cycles of revenge and animosity. And so, as a journalist, he always found himself asking lots of questions and trying to gather information. He was always very clear to underscore the fact that Jewish people and Arab people were brother and sister.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
The hands are churches that worship the world.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
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
Image
I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
I want to be someone making music/with my coming.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words and not one of them can save me.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I do think that all of us think in poems.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.
Naomi Shihab Nye