Sometimes 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. Liyana had seen this happen even in elementary school. Somebody wasn't fair to somebody and the hurt person just held it in. By the end of the year they had nearly disappeared. 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 it loose, but no one liked them by now. Liyana wondered if the person who could let it out the same size it was to begin with, was luckiest. 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. Naomi Shibab Nye
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Unknown

  2. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grassthe world is too full to talk about. - Jalaluddin Rumi

  3. When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix

  4. When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without... - Fred Rogers

  5. If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal. - John Lennon

More Quotes By Naomi Shibab Nye
  1. Sometimes 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. Liyana had seen this happen even in...

  2. ... mother seemed happy because the school yard where Rafik would spend his recesses was surrounded by a high stone wall. She'd recently started talking about 'safety' in a way that made Liyana jumpy. Liyana never thought about safety unless someone else brought it up....

Related Topics