Shihab Rattansi Quotes

Every day is a poetry day. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Apparently people commonly died when their loved ones were out of the room. Bathroom break. Quick trip down to the cafeteria for a grilled cheese. It was easier to die if you didn't have family members to worry about at that exact moment. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Most days weren't clear when you were in them. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

You will no longer pick this sage that flavors your whole life. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

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

I wondered stony afternoons owning all their vastness. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Like our parents always told us not to like firefighters warn against we're playing games and making the rules up as we go we're matching warmth to warmth starting fires burning wishes into our skin we're hidden holding forbidden lights we're children whose fathers have never taught never touch but we're finding these new flames we smother at the sound of footsteps. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

If they do it they will judge you by that. ~ SHIHAB KAZI

The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Are people the only holy land? ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Remembering your mistakes more acutely than any minor success. This was the worst. The things that kept you up at night. Tip a waiter that was too small. The words that didn't fit the moment. Words that didn't come till to late. You could kill yourself in increments, punishing your spirit day after day-regret. Guilt. Not the guilt of the little girl who woke in the night embarrassed God was mad at her because she had ticked balls under her shirt, pretending to have breasts. "I even felt sexy." That was sweet, and pure, no crime at all. But the crime of obsessive replay-get rid of it, get rid of it. Who could ever have known that hardest punishments would be the ones you gave yourself? ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

The real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

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

I want to be someone making music/with my coming. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

You Have to Be Very Careful"

You have to be careful telling things.
Some ears are tunnels.
Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.
Some ears are flat pans like the miners used
looking for gold.
What you say will be washed out with the stones.

You look for a long time till you find the right ears.
Till then, there are birds and lamps to be spoken to,
a patient cloth rubbing shine in circles,
and the slow, gradually growing possibility
that when you find such ears
they already know. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

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. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you? say no.
When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.
If they say we should get together.
say why? It's not that you don't love them any more.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees.
The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

If you could be anyone, would you choose to be yourself? ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Only in words on a page can it still be yesterday. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Fresh as a new notebook - that's how anyone wanted to live.

Hopeful as a pencil sharpened,
clear as one beam of light landing on the table's far side. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I do think that all of us think in poems. I think of a poem as being deeper than headline news. You know how they talk about breaking news all the time, that -- if too much breaking news, trying to absorb all the breaking news, you start feeling really broken. And you need something that takes you to a place that's a little more timeless, that kind of gives you a place to stand to look out at all these things. Otherwise, you just feel assaulted by all of the tragedy in the world. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

From "Why I could not accept your invitation"

Forgive me. Culture is everything
right now. But I cannot pretend
a scrap of investment in the language
that allows human beings to kill one another
systematically, abstractly, distantly.
The language wrapped around 37,000,
or whatever the number is today,
dead and beautiful bodies thrown into holes
without any tiny, reasonable goodbye. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Boy and Egg
Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetful in games,
ready to cry if the ball brushed him,
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist,
not ready to give it over
to the refrigerator
or the rest of the day. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Reading is like a flame that lights the way for your heart and mind. ~ Tahani Shihab

Maybe when your mother died young, you became instantly old. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Maybe we try too hard to be remembered, waking to the glowing yellow disc in ignorance, swearing that today will be the day, today we will make
something of our lives. what if we are so busy searching for worth that we miss the sapphire sky and cackling blackbird. what else is missing?
maybe our steps are too straight and our paths too narrow and not overlapping. maybe when they overlap someone in another country lights a candle, a couple
resolves their argument, a young man puts down his silver gun and walks away. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Prioritize imperfection, then perfection will follow you. ~ SHIHAB KAZI

I don't know if my father can hear me. But it is important to pretend he can./ My sanity rests in that. The man he was can hear the daughter I am. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I Still Have Everything You Gave Me
It is dusty on the edges.
It is slightly rotten.
I guard it without thinking.
I focus on it once a year
when I shake it out in the wind.
I do not ache.
I would not trade. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

why are we so monumentally slow? ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

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

I never did understand
why the tree was still happy
at the end. The little boy
used her until she was
nothing but a stump.
She couldn't even run away.
But the ending was always the same:
And the tree was happy. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

We walked where the ancient pier juts into the sea.
Stood on the rim of the pool, by the circle
of black boulders. No one saw we were there
and everyone who had ever been there
stood silently in air.
Where else do we ever have to go, and why? ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

To forgive ourselves for what we didn't do
Replay a scene over and over in mind
Change it change
Apologizing to our own story handful of soil
I could have planted something better here

To walk without remembering another walk
To wash off the hoped of a darkened day
Make a new one ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Or maybe his reclusiveness was a decisive marketing strategy-if you disappear, people are more interested in your work. You become a legend while you're still alive. Crouching behind a stonewall, or the post under a house ... people are kneeling down to find you. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Red Brocade"

The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he's come from,
where he's headed.
That way, he'll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you'll be
such good friends
you don't care.

Let's go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That's the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Being alive is a common road. It's what we notice makes us different. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief! ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I can never see fashion models,
lean angular cheeks, strutting hips
and blooming hair, without thinking of
the skulls at the catacombs in Lima, Peru. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

But pain and anguish were everywhere anyway. Might as well put them to good use. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side cafe, dealing dominoes like magical charms.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye

For you who came so far; for you who held out, wearing a black scarf to signify grief; for you who believe true love can find you amidst this atlas of tears linking one town to its own memory of mortar, when it was still a dream to be built and people moved there, believing, and someone with sky and birds in his heart said this would be a good place for a park. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell 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