Top 100 Nayyirah Waheed Quotes
#5. You travel to lush looted countries. parts of earth laying on their sides. barely breathing. hot with rust, infection, and tourist anemia. you and your camera arrive. start tearing at bodies with your lust. it's harmless. appreciating culture. sharing. honoring clothing. the way certain skin exists.
Nayyirah Waheed
#6. knowing your power
is what creates
humility.
not know your power
is what creates
insecurity.
Nayyirah Waheed
#7. I am a soft revolution. the one whose hair is bleeding.
Nayyirah Waheed
#8. There is a god in writing.
a soft. roaring. unconditional.
home of a god.
who prays to me.
Nayyirah Waheed
#10. A lie
is
simply a lie.
it draws its strength from belief.
stop believing
in
what hurts you.
- power
Nayyirah Waheed
#11. But this was never a relationship. i have no idea who you are.
Nayyirah Waheed
#12. When I am afraid to speak is when I speak.
That is when it is most important.
Nayyirah Waheed
#13. You are a story. do not become a word. one word. because you want to be loved. love does not ask you to be nothing for something.
Nayyirah Waheed
#14. I don't pay attention to the
world Ending.
It has ended for me
many Times
and began again in the morning.
Nayyirah Waheed
#15. I am so full of my tongue you would think speaking is easy. but it is not.
Nayyirah Waheed
#16. Would
you still want to travel to
that
country
if
you could not take a camera with you.
-a question of appropriation
Nayyirah Waheed
#17. Sometimes the night wakes in the middle of me. and i can do nothing but become the moon.
Nayyirah Waheed
#18. She was flower salt in my heart, and she hurt beautifully.
Nayyirah Waheed
#19. decolonization requires acknowledging. that your needs and desires should never come at the expense of another's life energy. it is being honest that you have been spoiled by a machine that is not feeding you freedom but feeding you the milk of pain.
Nayyirah Waheed
#21. will never know my skin. wild with everything and nothing but them. i sang into their blood. each and every one of them have my voices in their bones.
Nayyirah Waheed
#25. Desire is the kind of thing that
eats you
and
leaves you starving.
Nayyirah Waheed
#26. What we hide and do not say turns into another mouth that only we know.
Nayyirah Waheed
#27. As a writer, if someone falls in love with my work, I know they have fallen in love with my mind. Having no idea what my face looks like, they chose my mind. Art may be the only place a woman can be whole without being seen.
Nayyirah Waheed
#28. when,' is not something you ask someone when the bodies of their aunt. uncle. friends. first love. cannot be found.
Nayyirah Waheed
#29. I want to live so densely. lush. and slow in the next few years, that a year becomes ten years, and my past becomes only a page in the book of my life.
Nayyirah Waheed
#30. i have lost millions and millions
of words to fear.
tell me that is not violence.
- the deaths
Nayyirah Waheed
#31. we are never our own.
we must change this fact.
- acceptance
Nayyirah Waheed
#32. You
not wanting me
was
the beginning of me
wanting myself
thank you
Nayyirah Waheed
#34. I believe that everyone in the world.
has
one poem.
that is their soulmate.
Nayyirah Waheed
#35. Never
trust anyone
who says
they do not see color.
this means
to them,
you are invisible.
Nayyirah Waheed
#36. Do not choose the lesser life. do you hear me. do you hear me. choose the life that is. yours. the life that is seducing your lungs. that is dripping down your chin.
Nayyirah Waheed
#37. Drop a name in the water. drop a name in the water. and a name in the water. drop another name in the water. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. until there are no more bodies in your body. -
Nayyirah Waheed
#38. I will be lost and unlost, over
and over again, relax love. You
were meant to be this glorious.
Epic. Story.
Nayyirah Waheed
#41. I lost a whole continent.
a whole continent from my memory.
unlike all other hyphenated americans
my hyphen is made of blood.
when africa says hello
my mouth is a heartbreak
because i have nothing in my tongue
to answer her.
i don't know how to say hello to my mother.
Nayyirah Waheed
#42. as a woman i know the difference between appreciation and teeth. what really hurts is that as a girl i had to know the same thing.
Nayyirah Waheed
#44. I am a black wave in a white sea. always seen and unseen.
Nayyirah Waheed
#46. there is you and you.
this is a relationship.
this is the most important relationship.
Nayyirah Waheed
#47. i know, she is the love you are, the land you are made of, and she is hemorrhaging. war is eating her heart.
Nayyirah Waheed
#48. you see how your body is beginning to slow glow with stars. you are remembering. you are mine. you have never been anything else.
Nayyirah Waheed
#49. Just because someone desires you, it does not mean that they value you.
Read it over.
Again.
Let those words resonate in your mind.
Nayyirah Waheed
#50. i learned shukran. (thank you) first. shukran. (thank you) for this meal. shukran. (thank you) for making this for me. shukran. for everything. and in the midst of all of this. gratitude. la. (no) was lost. before. i ever found it. - the blunt force of gratitude
Nayyirah Waheed
#51. she asked 'you are in love what does love look like' to which i replied 'like everything i've ever lost come back to me.
Nayyirah Waheed
#53. And i heard her say, 'you
are afraid of love. but
love is not afraid of you.
Nayyirah Waheed
#54. Even the small poems mean something. they are often whales in the bodies of tiny fish.
Nayyirah Waheed
#55. Be easy. take your time. you are coming home. to yourself. - the becoming
Nayyirah Waheed
#56. My mother was my first country, the first place I ever lived.
Nayyirah Waheed
#57. They take no from our first breath. go back and return it to your mouth. your heart. your light.
Nayyirah Waheed
#58. Your soul stained my shoulders. my whole life smells like you. this will take time. undoing you from my blood.
Nayyirah Waheed
#59. I want to keep our body above water. you want to make us a fish. - fish
Nayyirah Waheed
#60. you ask your heart why it is always hurting. it says 'this is the only thing you will allow me to say to you. the only feeling you are willing to feel.
Nayyirah Waheed
#61. Yes. yes i do. have the right to be this lush and neverending.
Nayyirah Waheed
#62. Chemistry is you touching my arm and it setting fire to my mind
Nayyirah Waheed
Nayyirah Waheed
#63. In your arrogance you presume that i want your skinny language. that my mouth is building a room for it in the back of my throat. it is not.
Nayyirah Waheed
#64. Grieve. so that you can be free to feel something else.
Nayyirah Waheed
#67. There have been so many times
i have seen a man wanting to weep
but
instead
beat his heart until it was unconscious.
Nayyirah Waheed
#68. cry wild.
you have probably never
cried wild.
but, you know what doors
feel like.
you have
an intimacy with doors
that is killing you
-break
Nayyirah Waheed
#70. Can we speak in flowers.
it will be easier for me to understand.
Nayyirah Waheed
#72. If
the ocean
can calm itself,
so can you.
we
are both
salt water
mixed with
air.
Nayyirah Waheed
#73. Remember,
you were a writer
before
you ever
put
pen to paper.
just because you were not writing
externally.
does not mean you were not writing
internally.
Nayyirah Waheed
#74. I am your friend. a soul for your soul. a place for your life. home. know this. sun or water. here or away. we are a lighthouse. we leave. and we stay.
Nayyirah Waheed
#77. can you be a daughter.
if you have no
mother language."
- african american iii
Nayyirah Waheed
#80. Sometimes
the beauty of my people
is
so
thick and intricate.
i spend days
trying
to undo my eyes
so
i can sleep.
Nayyirah Waheed
#82. the poem.
the one that is running through
your life.
pay attention.
to that poem.
Nayyirah Waheed
#83. Some words build houses in your throat. and they live there, content and on fire.
Nayyirah Waheed
#84. We are houses eaten by rivers because we do not know their smell.
Nayyirah Waheed
#85. your skin smells like light. i think you are the moon.
Nayyirah Waheed
#86. apologize to your body.
maybe,
that's where the healing
begins.
Nayyirah Waheed
#88. I knew you
before
i met you.
i've known you my whole life.
Nayyirah Waheed
#91. Even if you are a small forest surviving off of moon alone, your light is extraordinary.
Nayyirah Waheed
#92. I love myself.'
the
quietest.
simplest.
most
powerful.
revolution.
ever.
Nayyirah Waheed
#93. Sometimes i want to say it. and there is nothing in english. that will say it.
Nayyirah Waheed
#94. Put some honey and sea
water by your bed.
acknowledge. that your being needs sweetness
and cleansing.
that it is sore.
that you are. soft.
- orishas
Nayyirah Waheed
#95. Poetry alters my dna. every poem is a different life. every poem brings me closer to myself. and breaks open a new future inside of me.
Nayyirah Waheed
#97. my mother gave me islam.
my father gave me the god of absence.
and here i am.
a religion made of myself.
Nayyirah Waheed
#98. It is being honest
about
my pain
that
makes me invincible.
Nayyirah Waheed
#99. the hard season will split you through. do not worry. you will bleed water.
Nayyirah Waheed
#100. length of our love. she was your eyes the day i met you. remember, you and i.
Nayyirah Waheed
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