Quotes from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose

Naomi Shihab Nye ·  176 pages

Rating: (396 votes)


“I am looking for the human who admits his flaws
Who shocks the adversary
By being kinder not stronger
What would that be like?
We don't even know”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“I have slept so many times you might think I would really be awake by now”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“Maybe we should just wander around other countries carrying books.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“I’m still the kid dreaming of the lives she’ll never have but guess what? Maybe she doesn’t want them.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“Only in words on a page can it still be yesterday.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose



“I was a fool, and I will always be a fool, and there will never, never, be a last day of school.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“So ask yourself, you swirling tornado of a human being, in a world of disoriented honeybees, do you want to look locked out the minute you sit down?”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“He’s mourning his son, number 3000 American dead in Iraq, but as far as he can feel, the worst one.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“And didn’t we pledge, pledge, pledge, palms on our chests, every day we lived, pledge to the one nation, the freedom we believed in, didn’t we? Fat lot of good.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


“It is difficult to predict what our finest moments will be, but we know when they happen.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose



“There are people we have never seen who are busy thinking up things we should be worried about.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose


About the author

Naomi Shihab Nye
Born place: in St. Louis, Missouri, The United States
Born date March 12, 1952
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Popular quotes

“Creo que la verdad está bien en las matemáticas, en la química, en la filosofía. No en la vida. En la vida es más importante la ilusión, la imaginación, el deseo, la esperanza. Además, ¿sabemos acaso lo que es la verdad? Si yo lo digo que aquel trozo de ventana azul, digo una verdad. Pero es una verdad parcial, y por lo tanto una especie de mentira. Porque el trozo de ventana no está solo, está en una casa, en una cuidad, en un paisaje. Está rodeado del gris de ese muro de cemento, del azul claro del cielo, de aquellas nubes alargadas, de infinitas cosas más. Y si no digo todo absolutamente todo, estoy mintiendo. Pero decir todo es imposible, aun en este caso de la ventana, de un siempre trozo de la realidad física. La realidad es infinita y además infinitamente matizada, y si me olvido de un solo matiz, ya estoy mintiendo. Ahora imagínese lo que es la realidad de los seres humanos con sus complicaciones y recovecos, contradicciones y además cambiantes. Porque cambia a cada instante que pasa, y lo que éramos hace un momento no lo somos más. ¿Somos, acaso, siempre la misma persona? ¿Tenemos acaso siempre los mismos sentimientos? Se puede querer a alguien y de pronto desestimarlo y hasta detestarlo. Y si cuando lo desestimamos cometemos el error de decírselo, eso es una verdad, pero una verdad momentánea, que no será más verdad dentro de una hora o al otro día, o en otras circunstancias. Y en cambio el ser a quien se la decimos creerá que ésa es la verdad, la verdad para siempre y desde siempre. Y se hundirá en la desesperación.”
― Ernesto Sabato, quote from On Heroes and Tombs


“Dealing with depression isn't about trying to run away from the feeling; it's about learning to walk alongside it.”
― Hannah Hart, quote from Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded


“There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slaughterhouse-five: The Children's Crusade, A Duty-dance with Death


“Dane discarded his speargun with visible relief. As a paladin of the Church of God Kraken, he had few options. Like many groups devoid of real power and realpolitik, the church was actually constrained by its aesthetics. Its operatives could not have guns, simply, because guns were not squiddy enough.
It was a common moan. Drunk new soldiers of the Cathedral of the Bees might whine: “It’s not that I don’t think sting-tipped blowpipes aren’t cool, it’s just…” “I’ve gotten rally good with the steam-cudgel,” a disaffected Pistonpunk might ask her elders “but wouldn’t it be useful to…?” Oh for a carbine, devout assassins pined.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken


“Can I tell you one thing?” Melonhead says.
I swallow. “Sure.”
“One day isn’t your whole life, Murph.” He waits until I look at him. “A day is just a day.”
I scoff and slouch in the chair. “So what are you saying? That people shouldn’t judge me on one mistake? Tell that to Judge Ororos.”
He leans in against the table. “No, kid. I’m saying you shouldn’t judge yourself for it.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost


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