Quotes from Sarah Kay

Impossible is trying to connect in this world; trying to hold on to others when things are blowing up around you; knowing that while you are speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk. They hear you.

You told me once that I was just the first draft, and I'm inclined to believe you, but you came with a lot more pieces to assemble and Mom and Dad never got the manual.

In New York, when a tree dies, nobody mourns that it was cut down in its prime. Nobody counts the rings, notifies the loved ones. There are other trees. We can always squeeze in one more. Mind the tourists. It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't wanna live there.

And the first time you come down to dinner, and your son is sitting at the dining room table wearing your hatred on his shoulders, who is going to be the first to tell him it is finally time to take it off?

I know you've taken to wearing tour father's hand-me-down anger. But I wish that you wouldn't. It's a few sizes too big and everyone can see it doesn't fit you...

And then thee 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 re times when hands feel nothing but empty.

It is hard to stop loving the ocean, even after it has left you gasping.

Then. I used to practice what I would look like when someone was falling in love with me.

There are so many things I would tell you if I thought that you would listen and so many more you would tell me if you believed I would understand.

Some men would want to hold you like the answer. You are not the answer.

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat. You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.

I know you've taken to wearing around your father's hand-me-down anger. But I wish that you wouldn't. It's a few sizes too big and everyone can see it doesn't fit you...

Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.

I use poetry to help me work through what I don't understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that I've been.

I want [my daughter] to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind.

I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.

Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.

Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

But I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both. I want to share every single one of your sunshines and save them for later. I will tuck them into my pockets so I can give them back to you when the rain falls hard. Friend, I want to be the mirror that reminds you to love yourself. I want to be the air in your lungs that reminds you to breath. When the walls come down, when the thunder rumbles, when nobody else is home, hold my hand, and I promise I won't let go.

Still now I send letters into space Hoping that some mailman somewhere will track you down And recognise you from the descriptions in my poems That he will place the stack of them in your hands and tell you, There is a girl who still writes you, she doesn't know how not to

Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night

Is there a word for the moment you win tug-of-war? When the weight gives, and all that extra rope comes hurtling towards you, how even though you've won, you still end up with muddy knees and burns on your hands? Is there a word for that? I wish there was.

Such a little thing really, a kiss... most people don't give it a moment's consideration. They kiss on meeting, they kiss on parting, that simple touching of flesh is taken entirely for granted as a basic human right.

It does not matter how strong your gravity is, we were always meant to fly.