A Quote by Naomi Shihab Nye

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words and not one of them can save me. — © Naomi Shihab Nye
Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words and not one of them can save me.
The America I do want to live in, is seeing how people respond to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. People of all races, all colors, all religions. You don't care what a person looks like, what their beliefs are - I'm helping them, because they are my fellow brother, or because they need my help. That's the America I want to live in. I don't want to live in Charlottesville, where you hate somebody because of the way that they choose to live their life. That's not a place where I want to live.
I know that sentence is long and has too many joining words in it but sometimes, when I'm angry, words burst out of me like a shout, or, if I'm sad, they spill out of me like tears, and if I'm happy my words are like a song. If that happens it's one of my rules not to change them because they're coming out of my heart and not my head, and that's the way they're meant to be.
As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only thing that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.
It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.
But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa!" And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.
Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself.
She asked me what made me do such a thing. That is an awkward question because I often can't tell what makes me do things. Sometimes I do them just to find out what I feel like doing them. And sometimes I do them because I want to have some exciting things to tell my grandchildren.
Because I'm so in the eye of the hurricane, I don't have a really good perception of what's happening. I'm in a room talking to people, and that's all I know. But sometimes I go out of these rooms - I live in L.A., and every now and then, maybe twice a week, I'll be somewhere, and someone will say, 'Hey, are you the guy that made Moonlight?'
Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.
Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cleaning graves and sitting next to them before fires, sharing food with those who will not eat again. We raise children and tell them other things about who they can be and what they are worth: to us, everything. We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive; we are savages.
When I left my home within society to live amongst the Grizzly's I went there so that I could sacrifice myself to something which was even more chaotic than the drinking and drug abuse. When I made the wholehearted attempt such as it was to 'save' the Grizzly's I wanted to actually save myself. The animals only later on became my life as well as my directive principle, not because they desired a human to protect them, rather because I wanted to do for them what is humanly possible when faced with such possibilities.
'Talk to me,' it's what you say to someone to let them know you're there. Just three simple words. But saying them out loud could help save a life.
I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.
Words save our lives, sometimes.
Man does not live by words alone, in spite of the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
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