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I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel once. I'm bloated with language I can’t afford to forget.
Warsan Shire
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Warsan Shire
Age: 36
Born: 1988
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Republic of Kenya
Passports
Airport
Airports
Hotel
Afford
Forget
Bloated
Language
Tore
Passport
More quotes by Warsan Shire
My heart is a flower blossoming out of my mouth.
Warsan Shire
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.
Warsan Shire
I won't glorify or romanticise heartbreak, for me it was a kind of death and I was forced to keep living.
Warsan Shire
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
There is no intimacy like that between two women who have chosen to be sisters.
Warsan Shire
I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.
Warsan Shire
You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.
Warsan Shire
Two people who were once very close can without blame or grand betrayal become strangers. Perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.
Warsan Shire
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.
Warsan Shire
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
My favourite people, biggest inspirations and closest friends are all women. Not a coincidence.
Warsan Shire
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.
Warsan Shire
With you, intimacy colors my voice. Even 'hello' sounds like 'come here'.
Warsan Shire
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
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
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.
Warsan Shire
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.
Warsan Shire
We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there.
Warsan Shire
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
You can't make homes out of human beings.
Warsan Shire