Top 47 Quotes & Sayings by Warsan Shire

Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren't ignoring it. You're healing; the fresh air can get to it. It's honest. You aren't hiding who you are. You aren't rotting. People can give you advice on how to heal without scarring badly. But on the other hand there are some people who'll feel uncomfortable around you. Some will even point and laugh. But we all have wounds.

Perhaps, the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving.

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.

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.

At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.

I belong deeply to myself.

With you, intimacy colors my voice. Even 'hello' sounds like 'come here'.

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

When I love, I love: wholly, thoroughly, completely, drowning in everything. Every glance can be a conversation, eyes just playing and saying what needs to be said. Silence is loud, and the air becomes heavy. I want you. I want all of you.

You can't make homes out of human beings.

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

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

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

And you tried to change, didn't you? Closed your mouth more. Tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake... You can't make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that. And if he wants to leave, then let him leave. You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.

You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.

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

Essentially, if our secrets are secrets because we are told to be ashamed, then we must share them. There is no shame in being sad or struggling or trying to heal. We are all desperate, depraved and sacred. We are all terrible and brillIant. I can list all the things that can make a girl want to escape her own body (re: patriarchy). But I’d rather list all the things that make me want to stay in my body, and adorn it like a home, rub oils into my skin, tell it how sorry I am for trying to leave, for trying to hurt it into submission

It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.

Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women, kitchen of love, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes, the men, they come with keys, and sometimes the men, they come with hammers.

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

We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there.

Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn't allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.

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

The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world.

Make peace with your body, it's not manmade, there are no flaws, there are no mistakes.

I’m not sad, but the boys who are looking for sad girls always find me. I’m not a girl anymore and I’m not sad anymore. You want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘Wow, isn't he so terribly brave to love a girl who is so obviously sad?’ You think I’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? I’ll swallow you whole.

Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel.

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.

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

I’m overwhelmed. My biggest downfall is my brightest blessing, I feel too much, all the time. Ya Allah, if it’ll keep my heart soft, break my heart every day.

The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.

My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.

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.

Later that night, I held an atlas on my lap, ran my fingers across the whole world, and whispered, ‘where does it hurt?’ It answered, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

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

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

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.

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.

Every mouth you’ve ever kissed was just practice. All the bodies you’ve ever undressed and ploughed in to were preparing you for me. I don’t mind tasting them in the memory of your mouth. Was it a long journey? Did it take you long to find me? You’re here now, welcome home.

I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.

Why do you live in your body like you will be given another? As if it were temporary. You starve it, you let anyone touch it, you berate it. Tell it that it should be completely different. You tug at your soft flesh, wish it thinner, wish it gone. You fall in love with those who praise the way it sighs under their hands, but who praises the way it holds up your weight, even when you are falling apart?

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

Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you're wearing, who you're around, what you're doing. Recreate and repeat.

My heart is a flower blossoming out of my mouth.

Light attracts light. But sometimes your light attracts moths and your warmth attracts parasites. Protect your space and energy

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.