“Does speaking some of the strangeness help us survive it, even if we can't solve or change it?”

— Naomi Shihab Nye, Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, 2018

About Naomi Shihab Nye

Born 1952

Palestinian-American poet and author.

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

“It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words.”

“Writers, believers in words, could not give up words when the going got rough.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.”

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”

“All becoming and growing—all that guarantees a future—involves pain.”

“The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.”

“Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning.”