Quotes from Rupi Kaur

I think I only started to speak to people in grade four.

My gut is so strong. I feel like I have a lot of books in me, and they're going to come out because I said so. It's going to happen.

My heart is beating, and I'm breathing, and nothing anybody has ever done has changed that.

In high school, I started saving up to get a nose job, which is so ridiculous. I had this job at Tim Hortons, and I was trying to save up $10,000 for a nose job.

Feeling 'ugly' or 'unattractive' seeps into your life like poison, and it affects everything. Feeling worthless does the same. We internalise these limitations, and it takes an internal revolution to get rid of them.

I can sit down with my sisters, and they can talk about my body in a certain way, and I will laugh about it with them. That's such a comfortable and loving relationship. But if a stranger I meet in a party makes the same comment, depending on their tone, that's not okay.

I sat with myself one day and asked, 'Who is in those prestigious literary circles? Do they represent me? Do they appreciate the topics I write about and the style in which I write? Do those gatekeepers let a demographic like mine through the door?' And the answer was no.

The topics just kind of come to me. If they are relevant, it's because they're happening in the world around me, and it's affecting me. Poetry is my way of dealing with it.

I like B.C. because it's so beautiful, but I think Toronto's the greatest place because every corner of the world is here.

I would give anything to sing like Beyonce or Adele. I've said many times to my friends that if I could sing like them, I would give up poetry and writing.

Being that my parents and I were immigrants to Canada, I didn't have the most lavish life growing up.

A lot of Indian fathers don't know how to show affection. My parents really do love me, even though my dad has never been able to say those words to me.

Social media has been such a big platform for my success. But it can also be a toxic place.

My parents didn't allow me to do all the things the cool kids could do. I was quiet, reserved, and at some points, taken complete advantage of simply because of my sex and gender. For a while, in high school, I was so deep into self-hate.

My writing is a product of how I would interact with things that have happened to me or things that have not happened to me but have happened to somebody else.

I'm a brown girl from a Punjabi pind raised in Toronto. I don't expect literary critics and purists to understand the nuances of my experiences, and the experiences of the people around me... And my tradition holds that there is a magic in the written word. So how I write, what I write of, and why I write all comes naturally.

Why are brown women bullying brown women for body hair? Why are brown women bullying brown women for the same traits we all have?

The trauma of South Asian people escapes the confines of our own times. We're not just healing from what's been inflicted onto us as children... it is generations of pain embedded into our souls.

I grew up thinking I was going to change the world, but not because I was treated like a special snowflake. It's a silly label. People are starving. We need to feed them. That's the end of the conversation.

Really, at the end of the day, the only thing you can control is yourself; the only person you can truly educate is yourself. You have to redefine what beauty is to you so you can't be affected by what people are saying.

There was no market for poetry about trauma, abuse, loss, love, and healing through the lens of a Punjabi-Sikh immigrant woman.

I always wrote stories, but I do remember a particular moment in middle school where I became passionate about essay writing.

With immigrant parents, they've had to sacrifice so much to survive, and they're trying to preserve the culture they lost, so there are just so many boundaries.

'You're beautiful' was the compliment I craved so much. I didn't care if people called me smart or innovative - it was the number-one compliment I gave out to other women hoping it was given back to me. I heard people saying it to my best friends. It was the one I wanted to hear more than anything else.