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the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle.

— Naomi Shihab Nye Widening the Circle (1995)

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More quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

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)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Naomi Shihab Nye (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.