Quotes from Sarah Kay

Her dress is the colour of marmalade, she chirps songs that have no words

If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.

We build model ships in bottles, whispering life into the toothpicks and wire; we make plans and blueprints for the one we hope is coming. And come they do. Fleets of vessels. Battleships and barges. They arrive on the horizon, flags to the sky.

I am watching parts of me evaporate like sidewalk water. This wet grey, this nighttime dew, gone before morning.

When I hear what I have written out loud, the cliches hang in the air between us like bad breath

Remember that good things come in three's. And so do bad things. And always apologize when you've done something wrong. But don't you ever apologise for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining; your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing.

And then there are days when sleeping is the hardest. The fight of muscle against world becomes so constant, that surrendering to slumber doesn't promise nearly enough relief. These are times when hands feel nothing but empty

He will never marry her, the translator tells me, after we have been driving in the dark for a few minutes. Yes, I say, but he can love her.

A sky still fits the ignition. There just isn't anything left to drive.

Sure, I know where most things are but give me enough time and I can lose anything.

And somewhere in between then and now irony slipped its way into my vocabulary. Laughter became the antidote for guilt. Sacrifice grew to be a Band-Aid for shame.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold, You can let them hold you. All day they practice keeping their bodies upright. Even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural, Still strains the muscles, holds firm the arms and spine. Only some men will want to learn what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you, Admit they don't have the answers they thought they would by now.

Me - I was not born with enough fuel. My anger often melts into sadness, it will just disintegrate into shame or fear, my clenched teeth release into chatter.

I will wake up early with my heavy heartbeat. You will say. Can't we just sleep in, and I will say, No, trust me. You don't want to miss a thing.

I tilted my head, looked into the distance. I don't even notice you falling in love with me, I practiced to the mirror. I am too preoccupied with what I am doing. Nobody wants to be noticed when they are falling in love. It is a private moment. Whoever was falling in love with me, I reasoned, deserved not to be disturbed.

You can only fit so many words in a postcard. Only so many in a phone call. Only so many into space, before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.

No, I don't think poems will save us. And yet, and yet

And the spaces that he never saw: the ones my parents had labeled private parts when I was still small enough to fit all of my self and worries inside a bathtub, I made up for them by handing over all the private parts of me. There was no secret I did not tell him, there was no moment we did not share. We didn't grow up, we grew in: like ivy wrapping, molding each other into perfect yins and yangs.

Once, she fell off of a ladder when I was three. She says all she was worried about was my face as I watched her fall.

Some people read palms to tell your future, I read hands to tell your past. Each scar marks a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle, is a broken bottle, a missed punch, a rusty nail, years in a factory.

Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.

What is it about immortality? With the right sword and shield, we think we can fend off anger, fear, and hatred. If our legs are strong enough, we think we can outrun age, loss, and death.

Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place.

You love each other until the city becomes beautiful.