Quotes from Sarah Kay

My world was the size of a crayon box, and it took every colour to draw her

I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks.

My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.

They'll be days like this" my momma said. When you open your hands to catch, and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you try to step out of the phone booth and try to fly , and the very people you want to save, are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees with disappointment And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say "Thank you".

Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory.

Oh, Brother. No matter your wreckage. There will be someone to find you beautiful, despite the cruddy metal. Your ruin is not to be hidden behind paint and canvas. Let them see the cracks.

Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried.

How strange, that when you are away, I reach for my cell phone's buzz as if it were your hand. Each shiver in my pocket, a way to find you.

It is December, and nobody asked if I was ready.

And know this: Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours. Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place. You are a woman who can build it yourself. You were born to build.

I promise to tidy up before company arrives, wouldn't want my socks and daydreams all over the carpet

Some nights, I wake up knowing he is anxious. He is across the world in another woman's arms and the years have spread us like dandelion seeds, sanding down the edges of our jigsaw parts that used to only fit each other

It is equally important to listen as it is to speak.

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

I write poetry to figure things out. Any time I'm trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me.

It's really hard for me to remember all of the places that I've been but I can remember all of the delicious meals that I've ever eaten. I love traveling by way or stomach...and finding quiet time.

At this point in my life - age 24 - I have chosen a fairly strange path that not many are walking. I am a professional spoken word poet who tours the world performing and teaching. I run an organization called Project VOICE dedicated to using this art form as an education and empowerment tool in schools and communities of all kinds.

I think there is a human instinct to tell stories, no matter who you are or where you live.

I have always been more comfortable with daredevil acts than with the everyday nuances of life. Let me jump out of a plane, speak in front of a roomful of strangers, even trek across Siberia.

I fell in love with poetry through storytelling, so my poetry tends to be fairly narrative. I like characters, I like having a beginning, middle, and ending, though not necessarily in that order.

Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

I love youas much as the oceankisses the shoreno matter how many timesit is sent away.

This is how I disappear in pieces.This is how I leave while not moving from my seat.This is how I dance away.This is how I'm gone before you wake.

My first spoken word poem, packed with all the wisdom of a 14-year-old, was about the injustice of being seen as unfeminine. The poem was very indignant, and mainly exaggerated, but the only spoken word poetry that I had seen up until that point was mainly indignant, so I thought that that's what was expected of me.