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I belong deeply to myself.

Warsan Shire

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Warsan Shire
Age: 36
Born: 1988
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Republic of Kenya
Heart
Belong
Deeply
Broken
Wonderful

More quotes by Warsan Shire

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You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.
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We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there.
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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.
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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.
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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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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
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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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There is no intimacy like that between two women who have chosen to be sisters.
Warsan Shire
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You can't make homes out of human beings.
Warsan Shire
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I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.
Warsan Shire
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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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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
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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.
Warsan Shire
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I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes on my face they are still together.
Warsan Shire
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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.
Warsan Shire
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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
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Light attracts light. But sometimes your light attracts moths and your warmth attracts parasites. Protect your space and energy
Warsan Shire
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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.
Warsan Shire
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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.
Warsan Shire
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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