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" 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. "

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" 'Milk and Honey' was written with me being honest to myself, kind of pulling at the things that I hear the most and saying that out loud, and you know, that thing that we hear the most is most universal, and so that rings true with all folks. The language used in the poetry is extremely, extremely accessible. "

Rupi Kaur

Language

Poetry

" 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

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

" I love Roald Dahl, Sharon Olds, Nizar Qabbani, who is a poet, and Junot Diaz. "

" 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 topics just kind of come to me. If they are relevant, it's because they're happening in the world around me, and it's affecting me. Poetry is my way of dealing with it. "

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

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

" When writing for the page, the focus is on the design - how the words appear on the page. I try to make it as direct and simple as possible. "

" My dad studies and practices homeopathy and Ayurveda medicine. He's a strong believer in both honey and milk as forms of healing. Honey is the one food that does not die. It does not expire. Growing up, he'd always be mixing up almonds or turmeric or gram flower with milk to cure a cough or a cold. "

" I don't fit into the age, race, or class of a bestselling poet. "

" Growing up, I naturally embraced who I was, but I was always battling with myself. So I spent half my time being proud of being a woman and the other half completely hating it. "

" My heart is beating, and I'm breathing, and nothing anybody has ever done has changed that. "

" 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. "

" It was tough to cope with the pressure of having to talk about menstruation, but now with 'Newsweek' splashing it as the cover story, I thing the point I wished to make has found its mark. "

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

" Truth, honesty, empowerment - it's what I want for myself and my readers. "

" Feeling 'ugly' or 'unattractive' seeps into your life like poison, and it affects everything. Feeling worthless does the same. We internalise these limitations, and it takes an internal revolution to get rid of them. "

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

" 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.' "

" 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 think social media is... really cool in the sense that I don't think that a writer like me would've found a readership if maybe Instagram wasn't there. "

Rupi Kaur

Think

Social Media

" I wasn't trying to write a book; it wasn't even in my vision. I was posting stuff online just because it made me feel relieved - as a way of getting things off my chest. "

" I'm a brown girl from a Punjabi pind raised in Toronto. I don't expect literary critics and purists to understand the nuances of my experiences, and the experiences of the people around me... And my tradition holds that there is a magic in the written word. So how I write, what I write of, and why I write all comes naturally. "

" There have been articles saying that all women need to read my book. I ask, why not all men? In fact, that would be even more valuable because we women want to sit down with men and tell them - this is how we feel, this is what we go through. "

" I feel social media can be very distracting, unhealthy, and harmful to one's self-confidence. I don't even log on to it on my phone except when I post something on Instagram. "

" I've been thinking a lot about the journey of my parents - just seeing the sacrifices they've made to allow me to do what I do. How much of a difference their sacrifices have made through the generations. "

Rupi Kaur

Journey

Parents

" 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

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

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