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”
“I have slept so many times you might think I would really be awake by now”
“Maybe we should just wander around other countries carrying books.”
“I’m still the kid dreaming of the lives she’ll never have but guess what? Maybe she doesn’t want them.”
“Only in words on a page can it still be yesterday.”
“I was a fool, and I will always be a fool, and there will never, never, be a last day of school.”
“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?”
“He’s mourning his son, number 3000 American dead in Iraq, but as far as he can feel, the worst one.”
“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.”
“It is difficult to predict what our finest moments will be, but we know when they happen.”
“There are people we have never seen who are busy thinking up things we should be worried about.”
“I may have no idea what I'm talking about," I said, a little ticked off now. "But we're all a part of a minority waiting for a majority to pull their heads out of their asses.”
“That.” Jona pointed. “That is faith. You cannot measure it with weights and doses like your herbs. You cannot classify it in your books, or test it with chemics. But it is there, more powerful than any bit of old world science. Only the Creator can see the path ahead. He makes of us what he wants—what the world needs—us to be. But we can have a glimpse, looking back.”
“Sometimes the weak will last for years, while the strong will suddenly collapse and die.”
“What this tells us is that children who are outperformed may give up rather than fight to improve, and those who do win may not feel compelled to keep trying as hard if even the losers get praise and a trophy.”
“The truth is that the goal of existence is to kill you.”
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