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" I can sit down with my sisters, and they can talk about my body in a certain way, and I will laugh about it with them. That's such a comfortable and loving relationship. But if a stranger I meet in a party makes the same comment, depending on their tone, that's not okay. "

Rupi Kaur

Laugh

Relationship

Meet

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" I used to submit to anthologies and magazines when I was a student - but I knew I was never going to be picked up. "

Rupi Kaur

Used

Submit

" Before I begin to write, I listen to music that inspires me. I listen to folk Punjabi music, sufi music. "

" I write from the various experiences I live. Not every poem comes from my personal experience, though. It could be something that a friend lived, or a person from my community here, or a woman anywhere around the world. "

" My writing is a product of how I would interact with things that have happened to me or things that have not happened to me but have happened to somebody else. "

Rupi Kaur

Somebody

Things

" Social media has been such a big platform for my success. But it can also be a toxic place. "

" A lot of Indian fathers don't know how to show affection. My parents really do love me, even though my dad has never been able to say those words to me. "

" I haven't had the opportunity to study visual art, but it was always my first love when it came to artistic expression. I started drawing and experimenting with visual art when I was 5. "

" I want to create a collection, almost like a trilogy of sorts. Whereas 'Milk and Honey' was very much like holding a mirror up to yourself, the second book is turning that mirror around and fixing it on the world. The book is a reflection of the times we are in. "

" My favourite character in fiction was probably either James from 'James and the Giant Peach' or Ender from 'Ender's Game.' They were just ordinary people who were living under various amounts of struggle, and just to follow their journeys and see them break out of that and live extraordinary lives - I think that gave me a lot of hope as a kid. "

" There was no market for poetry about trauma, abuse, loss, love, and healing through the lens of a Punjabi-Sikh immigrant woman. "

" I would give anything to sing like Beyonce or Adele. I've said many times to my friends that if I could sing like them, I would give up poetry and writing. "

Rupi Kaur

Writing

" I did not start out thinking I'm going to become a feminist poet. It was a tag I was given. "

" How do you redefine love when your idea of love is something that's so violent? When your idea of passion is anger, how do you fix that? "

" My parents didn't allow me to do all the things the cool kids could do. I was quiet, reserved, and at some points, taken complete advantage of simply because of my sex and gender. For a while, in high school, I was so deep into self-hate. "

" I was born in India, and we came from a poor family and lived in a rural village. My dad came over to Canada as a refugee, and years later, we were able to join him. "

" I grew up thinking I was going to change the world, but not because I was treated like a special snowflake. It's a silly label. People are starving. We need to feed them. That's the end of the conversation. "

" The trauma of South Asian people escapes the confines of our own times. We're not just healing from what's been inflicted onto us as children... it is generations of pain embedded into our souls. "

" I felt voiceless for so long, I wasn't ever able to say what I felt out loud. I didn't know how to say it. Posting online presented itself as a comfortable medium. I could say what I wanted to say in a way I still felt comfortable. Whenever, however I wanted to. "

" Why are we so terrified of a natural process that allows for life to be brought into this world? Why do we scramble to hide our tampons when we pull them out of our purses? "

" Being that my parents and I were immigrants to Canada, I didn't have the most lavish life growing up. "

" Why are brown women bullying brown women for body hair? Why are brown women bullying brown women for the same traits we all have? "

" The pain that all people experience in life and the light that helps them champion through it all - it's their lives and their stories and their love and will to keep living that moves me to write. "

Rupi Kaur

Love

Pain

" Poetry and art are key influences in changing how we look at taboos. "

" With immigrant parents, they've had to sacrifice so much to survive, and they're trying to preserve the culture they lost, so there are just so many boundaries. "

" Just because someone tells you they love you, it doesn't mean they actually do. "

" You have to really understand that although certain memories or stories make you sad, you are not sad. Pull yourself out from that emotion and remember that. "

" The way a small child might dream of visiting Disneyland, I dreamed of writing books. Never did I think my poems would become that. "

" For me, the power of the poetry in 'Milk and Honey' is the feeling you get after finished reading the poem. It's the emotion you feel once you've read the last word, and that is only possible when the diction is easy, and you don't get stuck on every other word, you don't know what the word means. "

Rupi Kaur

Honey

Know

" When I'd hang out with guy friends, I'd say things like 'I just don't get along with other girls.' Just so they could think I was cooler, you know? Shamelessly trying to level myself up by putting other women down. God it's so embarrassing to admit, but it's important cause I want people to know about the growth. That I'm not perfect. "

" I can go to all these cool places around the world, but when we land at YYZ, I'm like, 'Yes! It's flat. It's concrete. I'm okay with this; my people are here.' "