Quote

A poem is a cup of words open to the sky and wind in a bucket.

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
Sky
Wind
Open
Words
Bucket
Buckets
Cups
Poem

More quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

Image
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
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
What did exclusivity ever have to offer but a distorted, unrealistic view of the world? People who stuck only to their own kind were scared people.
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
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
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
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
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
Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.
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
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
Energy is everything. Rubbing happy and sad together creates energy.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
I do think that all of us think in poems.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
I want to be someone making music/with my coming.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Image
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
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