Quote

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

Warsan Shire

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Warsan Shire
Age: 36
Born: 1988
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Republic of Kenya
Shire
Terrifying
Strange
Everyone
Beautiful
Women
Something
Love

More quotes by Warsan Shire

Image
I tend to the wound so often, it never heals.
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
I want to love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.
Warsan Shire
Image
There is no intimacy like that between two women who have chosen to be sisters.
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
My favourite people, biggest inspirations and closest friends are all women. Not a coincidence.
Warsan Shire
Image
With you, intimacy colors my voice. Even 'hello' sounds like 'come here'.
Warsan Shire
Image
To my daughter I will say, ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire.’
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
I belong deeply to myself.
Warsan Shire
Image
Light attracts light. But sometimes your light attracts moths and your warmth attracts parasites. Protect your space and energy
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire
Image
Perhaps, the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving.
Warsan Shire
Image
I won't glorify or romanticise heartbreak, for me it was a kind of death and I was forced to keep living.
Warsan Shire
Image
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 Shire
Image
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.
Warsan Shire