19 Varieties of Gazelle Quotes

“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, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“We start out as little bits of disconnected dust.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“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, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Skin had hope, that's what skin does. Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.

Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—”shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“I support all people on earth who have bodies like and unlike my body”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Why should it be any surprise that people find solace in the most intimate literary genre? Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details. We need poetry for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it more successfully than any news channel we could name.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“In these evenings he sat by our beds weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words--
otherwise it is just a world
with a lot of rough edges,
difficult to get through, and our pockets
full of stones.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“those whom we did not know think they know us now.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“I wondered stony afternoons owning all their vastness.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Are people the only holy land?”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“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, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“what twists or rage greater than we could ever guess had savaged skylines, thousands of lives?”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“You will no longer pick this sage that flavors your whole life.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“the long sorrow of the color red.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“why are we so monumentally slow?”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“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, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“If grandmothers and children were in charge of the world, there would never be any wars. Peace, friends. Please don't stop believing.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“She stood on the roof, tears on her face.
What was the thing she never gave up?
The simple love of her difficult place.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Love means you breathe in two countries.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn't have one.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“No one was right.
Everyone was wrong.
What if they'd get together
and say that?
At a certain point
the flawed narrator wins.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“You cannot stitch the breath
back into this boy.

A brother and sister were playing with toys
when their room exploded.

In what language
is this holy?”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Now, while we are fresh.
While the century is still a wide-open page.
Now, a new story to be made
and everyone, with their fragrant nouns

and muscular verbs
to write it.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“dodging bullets, steps of the forgotten
trudging through rubble,
my cousins hiding in their houses,
Ibtisam's brother losing two kids in a minute,
the little blind Palestinian girls saying
"But we didn't cry!"
when their school was bombed,
no wonder we shudder and thrash,
a lack of oxygen in the news,
water tipping in the pool
to drown half its people, regular people
scrambling for a refuge,
for a cool place in the leaves,
if they had any leaves,
if their trees weren't uprooted
when they try to sleep,
curled in knots,
the earth rattling beneath them.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“In our family we laugh and cry
like two bites of the same dessert.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“In her first home each book
had a light around it.
The voices of distant countries
floated in through open windows,
entering her soup and her mirror.
They slept with her in the same thick bed.

Someday she would go there.
Her voice, among all those voices.
In Iraq a book never had one owner—it had ten.
Lucky books, to be held often
and gently, by so many hands.

Later in American libraries she felt sad
for books no one ever checked out.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“The bowl of steaming lentils
opened its wide mouth as we sat and sat,
stitching the seam of talk,
till the man with the rug from Baghdad arrived
rolling out its long length inside your door.

It was orange. It looked happy.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East