EJ > EJ's Quotes

“how far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps?
how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short?
why do you find the unavailable so alluring?
where did it begin? what went wrong? and who made you feel so worthless?
if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you?
all this time, you were begging for love silently, thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you, you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin?
and what about the others that would do anything for you, why did you make them love you until you could not stand it?
how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful?
where did you learn this, to want what does not want you?
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay?”
― Warsan Shire

“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
they were a long hall way
a door half open
a single suit case still on the conveyor belt
was it a long journey?
did it take you long to find me?
you’re here now,
welcome home.”
― Warsan Shire

“With you, intimacy colours my voice.
even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here'.”
― Warsan Shire

“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

“1. I’m lonely so I do lonely things
2. Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.
3. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood.
4. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home.
5. You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave.
6. I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember.
7. I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless.
8. It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth.
9. I couldn’t love you, you were a small war.
10. We covered the smell of loss with jokes.
11. I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents.
12. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay.
13. I’m not a dog.
14. We were trying to prove our blood wrong.
15. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things.
16. Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother.
17. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot.
18. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me.
19. You were too cruel to love for a long time.
20. It just didn’t work out.
21. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back.
22. I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth.
23. I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home.
24. The women in my family die waiting.
25. Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you.
26. I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me.
27. You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick.
28. He sent me a text that said “I love you so bad.”
29. His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile
30. We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love.
31. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you.
32. I’m a lover without a lover.
33. I’m lovely and lonely.
34. I belong deeply to myself .”
― Warsan Shire

“The moon is a loyal companion.
It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.
Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend. The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body.

I want to know where to touch you, I want to know how to touch you. I want to know convince you to design a smile just for me. Yes, I do want to be your friend. I want to be your best friend in the entire world.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

“We suffer each other to have each other a while.”
― Li-Young Lee

“a bruise, blue
in the muscle, you
impinge upon me.
As bone hugs the ache home, so
I'm vexed to love you, your body

the shape of returns, your hair a torso
of light, your heat
I must have, your opening
I'd eat, each moment
of that soft-finned fruit,
inverted fountain in which I don't see me.”
― Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You

“Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.”
― Li-Young Lee

“Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.”
― Li-Young Lee, Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee

“But, no one
can tell without cease
our human
story, and so we
lose, lose”
― Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You

“My tongue remembers your wounded flavor.
The vein in my neck
adores you. A sword
stands up between my hips,
my hidden fleece sends forth its scent of human oil.”
― Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You

“Memory revises me.”
― Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You

“Moonlight and high wind.
Dark poplars toss, insinuate the sea.”
― Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You

“In the uproar, the confusion
of accents and inflections
how will you hear me when I open my mouth?

Look for me, one of the drab population
under fissured edifices, fractured
artifices. Make my various
names flock overhead,
I will follow you.”
― Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You

“We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”
― Li Po

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.”
― Jacques Derrida

“I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.”
― David Lee Roth

“words carry colors and sounds into the flesh”
― Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

“...so i will greet you
in a way
all loved things
are meant to be greeted

with a tear in my heart
and a poem in my eye.”
― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird