Warsan Shire Quotes - Page 2

Two people who were once very close can without blame or grand betrayal become strangers. Perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.

How far have you walked for men who've never held your feet in their laps?

To my daughter I will say, ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire.’

I belong deeply to myself.

There is no intimacy like that between two women who have chosen to be sisters.

Make love like you have no secrets like you've never been left never been hurt like the world don't owe you a single wretched thing.

Sad people have the gift of time, while the world dizzies everyone else; they remain stagnant, their bodies refusing to follow pace with the universe. With these kind of people everything aches for too long, everything moves without rush, wounds are always wet.

I tend to the wound so often, it never heals.

You can't make homes out of human beings.

Poetry is like a portrait of a moment or person, and the poem is almost like looking at a photograph; it slaps you in the face and kisses you at the same time. Nothing else does that, with that brevity. Songs try to do it, but that's three minutes. A poem, you read it and it kind of changes your life and you don't know how it happened and you can never forget it. It's like the best song lyric, the best line from a film-everything in the world that's short and great put together.

I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing.

I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes; on my face they are still together.

My heart is a flower blossoming out of my mouth.

I won't glorify or romanticise heartbreak, for me it was a kind of death and I was forced to keep living.

I want to love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.

Your mouth is a lonely place but I keep coming back.

My name is indigenous to my country, it is not easy to pronounce, it takes effort to say correctly and I am absolutely in love with the sound of it and its meaning. Also, it's not the kind of name you baby, slip into sweet talk mid sentence, late night phone conversation, whisper into the receiver kind of name, so, of that I am glad.

Warsan means "good news" and Shire means "to gather in one place". My parents named me after my father's mother, my grandmother. Growing up, I absolutely wanted a name that was easier to pronounce, more common, prettier. But then I grew up and understood the power of a name, the beauty that comes in understanding how your name has affected who you are.

My favourite people, biggest inspirations and closest friends are all women. Not a coincidence.

Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck.

I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel once. I'm bloated with language I can’t afford to forget.

I think in Somali, I cuss in Somali, when I'm afraid I reach for somali and this language is very rich, very filling. It's an unflinching language; the crudest most terrible things sound perfectly normal in Somali.