James Keller > James's Quotes

“i want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful
before i’ve called them intelligent or brave
i am sorry i made it sound as though
something as simple as what you’re born with
is all you have to be proud of
when you have broken mountains with your wit
from now on i will say things like
you are resilient, or you are extraordinary
not because i don’t think you’re beautiful
but because i need you to know
you are more than that”
― Rupi Kaur

“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“i am a museum full of art
but you had your eyes shut”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“you tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but i was not made with a fire in my belly so i could be put out i was not made with a lightness on my tongue so i could be easy to swallow i was made heavy half blade and half silk difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

“how you love yourself is
how you teach others
to love you”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“i am water

soft enough
to offer life
tough enough
to drown it away”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“Every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love
you teach her to confuse
anger with kindness
which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to
trust men who hurt her
cause they look so much
like you.”
― Rupi Kaur

“stay strong through your pain
grow flowers from it
you have helped me
grow flowers out of mine so
bloom beautifully
dangerously
loudly
bloom softly
however you need
just bloom”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“most importantly love
like it's the only thing you know how
at the end of the day all this
means nothing
this page
where you're sitting
your degree
your job
the money
nothing even matters
except love and human connection
who you loved
and how deeply you loved them
how you touched the people around you
and how much you gave them”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“the world gives you so much pain and here you are making gold out of it
- there is nothing purer than that”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“fall
in love
with your solitude”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“apparently it is ungraceful of me
to mention my period in public
cause the actual biology
of my body is too real

it is okay to sell what's
between a woman's legs
more than it is okay to
mention its inner workings

the recreational use of
this body is seen as
beautiful while
its nature is
seen as ugly”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“if you tried
and didn’t end up
where you wanted to go
that’s still progress”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“make it a point
to love yourself
as fiercely as you do other people

- commitment”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“it’s easy to love
the nice things about ourselves
but true self-love is
embracing the difficult parts
that live in all of us
- acceptance”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“you lose everything
when you don't love yourself

- and gain everything when you do”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“i have this productivity anxiety
that everyone else is working harder than me
and i’m going to be left behind
cause i’m not working fast enough
long enough
and i’m wasting my time

i don’t sit down to have breakfast
i take it to go
i call my mother when i’m free—otherwise
it takes too long to have a conversation

i put off everything that
won’t bring me closer to my dreams
as if the things i’m putting off
are not the dream themselves

isn’t the dream
that i have a mother to call
and a table to eat breakfast at

instead i’m lost in the sick need
to optimize every hour of my day
so i’m improving in some way
making money in some way
advancing my career in some way
because that’s what it takes
to be successful
right

i excavate my life
package it up
sell it to the world
[...]

capitalism got inside my head
and made me think my only value
is how much i produce
for people to consume
capitalism got inside my head
and made me think
i am of worth
as long as i am working

i learned impatience from it
i learned self-doubt from it
learned to plant seeds in the ground
and expect flowers the next day

but magic
doesn’t work like that
magic doesn’t happen
cause i’ve figured out how to
pack more work in a day
magic moves
by the laws of nature
and nature has its own clock
magic happens
when we play
when we escape
daydream and imagine
that’s where everything
with the power to fulfill us
is waiting on its knees for us

- productivity anxiety”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“my mind
my body
and i
all live in one place
but it feels like we are
three completely different people
- disconnected”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“i want to leave this place knowing
i did something with my body
other than trying to
make it look perfect”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“you are lonely
but you are not alone
- there is a difference”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“you are a soul. a world. a portal. a spirit. you are never alone. you are organs and blood and flesh and muscle. a colony of miracles weaving into each other.”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“how can i be so cruel to myself when i’m doing the best i can - be gentle”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“i get so lost
in where i want to go
i forget that the place i’m in
is already quite magical”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“we already have the things that can complete us
they just aren’t things
they are people
and laughter and connection
- irreplaceable”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“there is a conversation
happening inside you
pay deep attention
to what your inner world
is saying”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“i’m not going to pretend to be less intelligent than i am so a man can feel more comfortable around me”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“on days you can’t hear yourself
slow down to
let your mind and body
catch up to each other
- stillness”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“you didn’t lose it happiness has always been here - you just lost perspective”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“we were always in survival mode long after we didn’t need to be”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“can you hear the women who came before me five hundred thousand voices ringing through my neck as if this were all a stage built for them i can’t tell which parts of me are me and which parts are them can you see them taking over my spirit shaking out of my limbs to do everything they couldn’t do when they were alive”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body