Naomi Shihab Nye Quotes
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!
Quotes to Explore
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A lot of the time I'm working with people who are older than me.
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I wanna live 'til I die, no more, no less.
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Can a moment of madness make up for an age of consent?
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I've always felt a bit hard done by in England – you know, I've won the Bisto three times in Ireland, but it has felt like nobody has even heard of me in my home country.
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I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.
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Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at 'The New Yorker,' wrote one of the masterpieces of narrative non-fiction, 'Hiroshima.' Hersey was a teacher of mine at Yale, and a friend. He got me to see the possibility of journalism not just as a business but as an art form.
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It's easy to get published once you have written a really good book and the hard part, 99 percent of what you need to worry about, is really finishing it.
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People who don't know me, how will they know what I am really like? They will only see me on the field, only see me in an advertisement. People who know what kind of a guy I am will tell you I'm a very open person.
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I worked hard in gymnastics since the time I was six years old until I retired at 23 years of age.
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I'm the youngest of five – three girls and two boys. There was one record player for the seven of us. It was good for me, because I got to hear everyone else's music.
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I think the most rewarding part for me is kind of not knowing where the story's going next, and then finding out and being blown away by it.
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It's terrible to realize you don't learn how to live until you're ready to die, and then it's too late.
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Sometimes in television, if there are storylines that are oft-told, people can be hypercritical of them.
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Unfunny people should be locked up, the key tossed into a smelter.
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I will try to give my 100% in the field and do my job.
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Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.
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I love it when a character requires me to look less than my red-carpet best.
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Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
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But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying, hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed.
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Where the light is, and each thing clear, Separate from all others, standing in its place, I drink the time and touch whatever's near, And hope for day when the whole world has that face: For what assures her present every year? In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.
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The word 'feminist' is a word that discriminates, and I'm not into that. I don't think there has to be a separation in life in anything. [...] Labels are for other people to understand us, so for me, I know how I feel and I don't need to call myself a 'feminist' or 'not a feminist' because I know what my truth is.
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Life was life. It happened. You never knew what was going to come at you. Or how you could defend yourself.
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Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit.
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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!
