78 quotes
Greedy men say "More!" to war
Sitting together telling stories
could change that but who will take the time?
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)
Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories.
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (2020)
Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
I think of poets over the ages sending their voices out into the sky, leaving quiet, indelible trails.
Introduction to This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World (1992)
If one of your people
equals hundreds of ours,
what does that say about people?
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)
Politics is simply the way human beings treat
one another on the earth.
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)
What makes a man with a gun seem bigger
than a man with almonds?
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)
I can't stop believing human beings everywhere hunger for deeper-than-headline news about one another. Poetry and art are some of the best ways this heartfelt "news" may be exchanged.
introduction to The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East (1998)
Light taking forever to get here,
more precious when it arrives.
Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (2020)
The things that cause you friction are the things from which you might make art. Surely losing is one of the most endemic frictions of our journey.
introduction to What Have You Lost? (1999)
Think of it: two peoples, so closely related it's hard to tell them apart in the streets sometimes, claiming the same land. The end of the twentieth century.
Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places (1996)
Think of all the towns and cities
we've never seen or imagined.
Habibi (1997)
In your dream no one is a refugee.
Everyone has clean sheets.
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)
Don't we all need someone to greet us
to make us feel we're here?
Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (2020)
If you could be anyone,
would you choose to be yourself?
Habibi (1997)
Whenever someone suggests "how much is lost in translation!" I want to say, "Perhaps but how much is gained!" A new world of readers, for one thing.
Introduction to This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World (1992)
In these days when "trade" is an amplified word, with the images of appliances and factories and skills flying back and forth across a border, I prefer to imagine cultures trading invisible riches.
Sometimes it works to fight logic with logic and craziness with craziness. This truth, however, cannot be depended on.
Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (2020)