Quote

our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes.

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
Traveled
Smooth
Soles
Shoes
Untroubled
Distance
Distances
Beyond
Click
Already
Clicks
World
Limbs
Carrying

More quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

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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.
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The hands are churches that worship the world.
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I support all people on earth who have bodies like and unlike my body.
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Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
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The person you have known a long tme is embedded in you like a jewel. The person you have just met casts out a few glistening beams & you are fascinated to see more of them. How many more are there? With someone you've barely met the curiosity is intoxicating.
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I want to be famous 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.
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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.
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It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.
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A poem is a cup of words open to the sky and wind in a bucket.
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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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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.
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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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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
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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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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.
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This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
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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.
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Peter Conners stunning prose poems are packed with keen sensitivity, dreaminess, and wit. I love his time travels, the vibrant layering of image and detail. Try taking walks as you are reading this book- the dazzle of landscapes, inner and outer, feel replenished and rich. This is language and vision I want to come home to again and again.
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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.
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye