Quote

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

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Warsan Shire
Age: 36
Born: 1988
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Republic of Kenya
Difficult
Allow
Giving
Tell
Daughter
Makes
Trust
Doesn
Name
Shire
Cannot
Full
Pronounce
Names
Daughters
Truth
Anyone
Command
Give
Use
Tongue
Right

More quotes by Warsan Shire

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I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes on my face they are still together.
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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.
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You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.
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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.
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There is no intimacy like that between two women who have chosen to be sisters.
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I won't glorify or romanticise heartbreak, for me it was a kind of death and I was forced to keep living.
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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.
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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.
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The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.
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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.
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Perhaps, the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving.
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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.
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I belong deeply to myself.
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My favourite people, biggest inspirations and closest friends are all women. Not a coincidence.
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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.
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Your mouth is a lonely place but I keep coming back.
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How far have you walked for men who've never held your feet in their laps?
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I tend to the wound so often, it never heals.
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I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.
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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