A Quote by Rupi Kaur

The topics just kind of come to me. If they are relevant, it's because they're happening in the world around me, and it's affecting me. Poetry is my way of dealing with it.
Things happening around the world are affecting you and me.
I felt like I was a writer, and I just thought filmmaking was the best way for me to express that, because it allows me to embrace the visual world that I love. It's allows me to interact with people, to be more social than fiction or poetry, and it felt like the right way for me to tell the stories that felt pressing to me.
Everything is an idea for something, something that touches the imagination, a fact that seems relevant or maybe just a statement I find interesting — either because it resonates or because I disagree. All of it is fodder for continued work or thinking on the topics. It’s also important to me to record the ideas that my instincts tell me are bad.
I wrote poetry in a secretive way, I think, a secret from myself, I mean. I wrote it because it gave me great pleasure to do so and because it relieved the ever-building pressure of the demanding world around me. It's always served me as a way of appraising, and controlling overwhelming experiences. But this need, and desire, was always in conflict with my need to "survive."
Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.
For some of my young female readers, it will be the first time they will have seen a Punjabi author be successful in the West. Because I'm dealing with topics that aren't always easily discussed, I know they will look up to me, because I would have done the same. So I just want to make sure I do right by them, wherever this takes me.
The majority of the time... the people that are critiquing and bashing me, they're making me more relevant, I would think. If you didn't want me around, then just don't talk about me, and try and make it silent out there.
Dealing with the unknown, the unexpected, is a reflection for me musically of what's happening in the world, because people are learning how to dialog with each other without any past strategy or any kind of formula from the past.
Poetry is a way of always paying attention to the world for me; a way of letting the world stick to me instead of being anxious or estranged, just being present in the world.
I just kind of talk about what's happening in my life and it's kind of like a therapy session. Usually something good comes out of that. Or sometimes other writers will come to me with ideas and then I'll put my own spin on it. It's usually really collaborative and open and it's very therapeutic for me as well.
I like to talk about very different topics. I like to jump around a lot because I don't want people to come see me and then for an hour I tell jokes about being a little person. I just don't want that to happen. I understand that it's part of me, that's the first thing that you notice and it's something that people are curious about.
Every time I attend a We Day event, I learn something new, and I always feel way more perspective not just for the world I live in, but also the world that's happening around me.
I travel around the world in a way that tries to open my mind and give me empathy and inspire me to come home and make this world a better place.
My falling in love with spoken word poetry definitely came out of that time period where all the adults around me were failing to supply me with any answers. Everyone was too busy dealing with things that were more important. I was pretty lost and invisible. And all of a sudden, this world opened up where I could get on stage and perform in front of my peers. People would listen to me and see me, and people would say, "That thing you created was important." And that was so validating and necessary at that specific moment.
When I can see someone that's posting the way that they're thinking about what's happening in the world right now or even art that they've created, it inspires me to do the same. It makes me turn off my phone and go paint a painting or go hike a mountain or go record a song. Those are the kind of things that social media helps me do. But it also can make me sit in my room and not do anything.
My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do; and to me the hermaphrodite and the living skeleton were interesting for the same reason as was Creatore, or the resplendent Guardsmen of the bands - because such people did not often come my way, and I hoped that they might impart some great revelation to me, some insight which would help me to a clearer understanding of the world about me.
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