Kelila > Kelila's Quotes

“For ten years I thought I was preparing to destroy you, when really I was preparing to love you.”
― Ann Liang, I Hope This Doesn't Find You

“I want you to hold me like a grudge, keep me like a promise, haunt me like a ghost.”
― Ann Liang, I Hope This Doesn't Find You

“I’d rather be the villain who lives to the end than the hero who winds up dead”
― Ann Liang, If You Could See the Sun

“And this, I think, is my ultimate fatal flaw. Missing people who don’t miss me back. Clinging on to strands of string that shouldn’t mean half as much as they do. It takes so little for me to love someone, yet so long for me to move on.”
― Ann Liang, This Time It's Real

“I guess my point is that I do believe in love. Really. I'm just not convinced that kind of love could ever happen to me.”
― Ann Liang, This Time It's Real

“Maybe I’ll always be scared. Maybe the fear of getting hurt, of being left alone,
will never truly go away. But even if it’s my default setting, I can fight it. So many beautiful things lie on the other side of fear.
Like love.
Like this.”
― Ann Liang, This Time It's Real

“And I don't know how to make people stay; I never have.”
― Ann Liang, This Time It's Real

“If by any chance we do not meet again in this lifetime, then I will find you in the next—or as many lifetimes as it takes to see you again.”
― June Hur, A Crane Among Wolves

“I am tired of being the elder sister, were the words within. When I expressed my objection for the first time today, Father gave me such a look of disappointment that I felt my entire world tremble. Why does he only see my disobedience, and not my desperate love for him? To live near home, to be close enough to care for my parents in their old age—I wish I could cry, I wish I could fall apart as little sister often does, and still be loved and understood. But I cannot. My parents do not love me when I am weak, when I fail them, when I err. Who am I, if I am not the perfect daughter?”
― June Hur, A Crane Among Wolves

“You would brave a life with me?"
"I would brave this life," I murmured against him, "and a thousand more.”
― June Hur, A Crane Among Wolves

“So long as you live, we’ll have the rest of our lives to find each other again. And I will find you again. I promise.”
― June Hur, A Crane Among Wolves

“i want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful
before i’ve called them intelligent or brave
i am sorry i made it sound as though
something as simple as what you’re born with
is all you have to be proud of
when you have broken mountains with your wit
from now on i will say things like
you are resilient, or you are extraordinary
not because i don’t think you’re beautiful
but because i need you to know
you are more than that”
― Rupi Kaur

“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“i am a museum full of art
but you had your eyes shut”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“I didn't leave because
I stopped loving you,
I left because the longer
I stayed the less I loved myself.”
― Rupi Kaur

“do not look for healing
at the feet of those
who broke you”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“if you were born with the weakness to fall you were born with the strength to rise”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

“i am water

soft enough
to offer life
tough enough
to drown it away”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“Every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love
you teach her to confuse
anger with kindness
which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to
trust men who hurt her
cause they look so much
like you.”
― Rupi Kaur

“people go but how they left always stays”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“i do not want to have you
to fill the empty parts of me
i want to be full on my own

i want to feel so complete
i could light a whole city
and then
i want to have you
cause the two of
us combined
could set
it on fire”
― Rupi Kaur

“Our backs tell stories
no books have the spine to carry”
― Rupi Kaur

“i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like
when i am sad
i don’t cry i pour
when i am happy
i don’t smile i glow
when i am angry
i don’t yell i burn
the good thing about
feeling in extremes
is when i love
i give them wings
but perhaps
that isn't
such a good thing
cause they always
tend to leave and
you should see me
when my heart is broken
i don't grieve
i shatter”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“you might not have been my first love
but you were the love that made
all other loves seem
irrelevant”
― Rupi Kaur

“how is it so easy for you to be kind to people he asked milk and honey dripped from my lips as i answered cause people have not been kind to me”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“It is not enough
to say 'love' in Arabic.
You must say
'be the thing that buries me.”
― Hala Alyan

“I'm here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.

I'm here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.”
― Hala Alyan

“My favorite house is my mother.”
― Hala Alyan, The Moon That Turns You Back: Poems

“This neighborhood was mine first. I walked each block twice:
drunk, then sober. I lived every day with legs and headphones.
It had snowed the night I ran down Lorimer and swore I’d stop
at nothing. My love, he had died. What was I supposed to do?
I regret nothing. Sometimes I feel washed up as paper. You’re
three years away. But then I dance down Graham and
the trees are the color of champagne and I remember—
There are things I like about heartbreak, too, how it needs
a good soundtrack. The way I catch a man’s gaze on the L
and don’t look away first. Losing something is just revising it.
After this love there will be more love. My body rising from a nest
of sheets to pick up a stranger’s MetroCard. I regret nothing.
Not the bar across the street from my apartment; I was still late.
Not the shared bathroom in Barcelona, not the red-eyes, not
the songs about black coats and Omaha. I lie about everything
but not this. You were every streetlamp that winter. You held
the crown of my head and for once I won’t show you what
I’ve made. I regret nothing. Your mother and your Maine.
Your wet hair in my lap after that first shower. The clinic
and how I cried for a week afterwards. How we never chose
the language we spoke. You wrote me a single poem and in it
you were the dog and I the fire. Remember the courthouse?
The anniversary song. Those goddamn Kmart towels. I loved them,
when did we throw them away? Tomorrow I’ll write down
everything we’ve done to each other and fill the bathtub
with water. I’ll burn each piece of paper down to silt.
And if it doesn’t work, I’ll do it again. And again and again and—
— Hala Alyan, “Object Permanence”
― Hala Alyan