Novelists From The United States

"I am moved by her (Janna Jihad Ayyad) as I have always been moved by the struggle of Palestinian people to maintain any kind of regular normal life under extremely harsh circumstances. (2019)"

"When we were born we were blank pieces of paper; nothing had been written yet."

"All our roots go deep down, even if they’re tangled (p199)"

"Palestinians are all haunted. We’re haunted by what used to be, what could have been, what we dream could be, what we would prefer for all the people who are living there right in the heart of it—and have everything at stake. (2024)"

"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! (2014)"

"I feel very close to that part of each of us which remains young, idealistic, and curious. (2019)"

"For years the word floated in the air around their heads, yellow pollen, wispy secret dust of the ages passed on and on. Habibi, darling, or Habibti, feminine for my darling. (p204)"

"You can sit down and write three sentences — how long does that take, three minutes, five minutes? — and be giving yourself a very rare gift of listening to yourself, just finding out, when you go back and look at what you wrote. And how many times we think, “Oh, I would never have remembered that if I hadn’t written it down — when and how did that even occur to me? I sort of like it, this week, and it could help me, and now I want to connect it to something else.”"

"Maybe the hardest thing about moving overseas was being in a place where no one but your own family had any memory of you. It was like putting yourself back together with little pieces. (p80)"

"In Jerusalem so much old anger floated around, echoed from fading graffiti, seeped out of cracks. Sometimes it bumped into new anger in the streets. The air felt stacked with weeping and raging and praying to God by all the different names. (p89)"

"Some people carried anger around for years, in a secret box inside their bodies, and it grew tighter like a hardening knot. The problem with it getting tighter and smaller was that the people did, too, hiding it...But other people responded differently. They let their anger grow so large it ate them up--even their voices and laughter. And still they couldn't get rid of it. They forgot where it had come from. They tried to shake the anger loose, but no one liked them by now. (p89)"

""I would like to go to school with the donkeys in the field. To stand all day in the free air with an open mouth. No bells ringing." (p75)"

"She opened her mouth and a siren came out."

"Being little was a skin that fit. (p11)"

"Think of all the towns and cities we've never seen or imagined."

"If you could be anyone,would you choose to be yourself?"

"Outside, the sky felt deep and dark as if a large soft blanket had been thrown over the hills and valleys. (p54)"

"Mystery remains part of many poems, as well it should, since it remains part of our lives no matter who or where we are."

"There may be nothing more "basic" in education than gaining a sense of one's own voice. By acknowledging and shaping shared experience, we grow bigger. Poems help us see the world around us as rich material. And nothing is better than reading the work of our peers, as well as the work of older poets, to get us going in our particular terrain. A poem we love makes us want to write our own-hand to hand, map to map, contagious, delicious voices spinning us forward inside our cluttered, clattering lives."

"In the midst of public jabber, high-velocity advertising, and shameless television, where is one true word? Where are three? Who will pause long enough to describe something truly, and clearly? Where is the burn of speech, the sweet rub of language, the spark that links us? Poetry, poetry! Rearranging right at the heart level, where standardized tests often don't go. I think our frenzied days are hungry for the kind of quietude poetry offers. It doesn't take long to weave it into our lives."

"Aref kept thinking that no matter what you say, there is something more inside that you can't say. You talk around it in a circle, like stirring water with a stick, when ripples swirl out from the center. (p. 259)"

"Liyana Abboud had just tasted her first kiss when her parents announced they were leaving the country. (first line)"

"When you drove out in the country, you felt closer to the earth than you felt in the city. You had better thoughts in the country. Your thoughts made falcon moves, dipping and rippling, swooping back into your brain to land. Maybe the motion of spinning wheels relaxed and enlivened them. Your thoughts weren't tied to one spot, and they weren't nervous, either. They were just open, and rolling. Maybe this was why some people decided to travel all of their lives, going to new places, not knowing what they would see next. (p211)"

"Some people let their countries become their religions and that didn't work either. (p174)"

""How should we use poetry?" people sometimes ask me. Read it! Share it with one another! Find poems that make you resonate. Different poems will do this for every person. We "use poetry" to restore us to feeling, revitalize our own speech, awaken empathy."

"Discovering Something New Every Day was an Al-Amri family motto. Aref's father said people started playing this game the day they were born. (p7)"

"People I read a lot to my son were people like Robert Bly and Lucille Clifton, Frank O’Hara for some reason, Chinese poems, Japanese poems."

"Arab culture is full of great story tellers, and it is one of the favorite pastimes of Arab people. I think that there is a deep hunger in the human psyche for story and the nourishment it gives us. People don't live on one level chatter alone, rhetoric or just the conveyance of news. We need the threading and layering of a day that story gives us, and that's very much from the culture."

""Look at something ahead of you in the distance, then look at it when you get right up next to it, then turn around and look at it again when it is behind you." (p. 108)"

"Some days were long sentencesflowing into one another."

"Right then he knew that moment was clearly written in his brain forever. (p170)"

"When people tilt their heads just slightly to imagine another person's experience, the space inside the mind grows. (2019)"

"If you're an "I read before I go to sleep" sort of person, why not add a little more I-just-got-home-from-school-or-work reading? In the modern world, we deserve to wind down. Or perhaps some morning reading, to launch yourself? How long does it take to read a poem? Slowing to a more gracious pacing-trying not to hurry or feel overwhelmed-inch by inch-one thought at a time-can be a deeply helpful mantra. It's a gift we give our own minds."

"Language is its own music."

"I do believe in overwriting, then cutting back. Physical fitness of the pen, page, and mind, interwoven. If you believe in revision you don't have to worry about perfection. Try not to worry about anything. It's impossible, of course, but try. I do think writing will help you live your life."

"Aref kept staring at the sleeping turtles on the beach as they climbed. Turtles weren't just cold-blooded reptiles. They were miracles. (p201)"

"Voices as guides, lines and stanzas as rooms, sometimes a single word the furniture on which to sit...each day we could open the door, and enter, and be found. These days I wonder-was life always strange-just strange in different ways? Does speaking some of the strangeness help us survive it, even if we can't solve or change it?"

"Perhaps we have more voices in the air now-on TV, in our phones and computers and little saved videos-but are we able to hear them as well? Are these the voices we really need? Is our listening life-space deep enough? Can we tell ourselves when we need to walk away from chatter, turn it off entirely for half a day, or a full day, or a whole weekend, ease into a realm of something slower, but more tangible? Can we go outside and listen?"

"what a pleasure just to say words that felt bigger than you were. (p174)"

"We feel uplifted, exhilarated. Writing regularly can help us feel that way too. It slows and eases us, calms us down. Having a focal point is generative. Consider the spaciousness of the sky over the water, which we often forget about as we scurry through our days. I love what the poet Marvin Bell has suggested about writing-Read something, then write something. Read something else, then write something else. It's all connected, it's always been connected. Let one activity inform the other. Streams of language exchanging their powers."

"Salma Khadra al-Jayusi has been instrumental in her role as a transmitter of Arabic literature."

"Each thing gives us something else...The more any of us writes, the more our words will "come to us." If we trust in the words and their own mysterious relationships with one another, they will help us find things out."

"I would strongly suggest that bicultural families such as mine teach their children both languages from the beginning if they can."

"why, out of all the talk, do you remember that thing?"

"Give up the annoying question, "How long does this have to be?" Just wonder-how long does it need to be? Then try to find out."

"What did exclusivity ever have to offer but a distorted, unrealistic view of the world? People who stuck only to their own kind were scared people"

"I think of poets over the ages sending their voices out into the sky, leaving quiet, indelible trails."

"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."

"This is what I want a book of poems and paintings to be-a surprising spring waking us from our daily sleep. A feast of little dishes. An unexpected walk along the rim of a majestic city. Ahlan Wa Sahlan-You are all welcome!"

"[He] had a new theory. "Every day, focus on one thing. Think about it, examine it, look at it from different directions, change your mind. Make notes, ask questions, connect it to other things if you want but still... mostly one thing." (p209)"