Rupi Kaur Love Quotes

i am a museum full of art but you had your eyes shut

I didn't leave because I stopped loving you, I left because the longer I stayed the less I loved myself.

how you love yourself is how you teach others to love you

he placed his hands on my mind before reaching for my waist my hips or my lips he didn't call me beautiful first he called me exquisite - how he touches me

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.

you might not have been my first love but you were the love that made all other loves seem irrelevant

fall in love with your solitude

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

i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like when i am sad i don’t cry i pour when i am happy i don’t smile i glow when i am angry i don’t yell i burn the good thing about feeling in extremes is when i love i give them wings but perhaps that isn't such a good thing cause they always tend to leave and you should see me when my heart is broken i don't grieve i shatter

the very thought of you has my legs spread apart like an easel with a canvas begging for art

i am not a hotel room. i am home i am not the whiskey you want i am the water you need don't come here with expectations and try to make a vacation out of me

If I'm not the love of your life I'll be the greatest loss instead

love will come and when love comes love will hold you love will call your name and you will melt sometimes though love will hurt you but love will never mean to love will play no games cause love knows life has been hard enough already

what am i to you he asks i put my hands in his lap and whisper you are every hope i've ever had in human form

no it won't be love at first sight when we meet it'll be love at first remembrance cause i've seen you in my mother's eyes when she tells me to marry the type of man i'd want to raise my son to be like

there is a difference between someone telling you they love you and them actually loving you

I’d be lying if I said you make me speechless the truth is you make my tongue so weak it forgets what language to speak in.

i was music but you had your ears cut off

if I am the longest relationship of my life isn't it time to nurture intimacy and love with the person I lie in bed with each night

on the last day of love my heart cracked inside my body

what i miss most is how you loved me. but what i didn't know was how you loved me had so much to do with the person i was. it was a reflection of everything i gave you. coming back to me. how did i not see that. how. did i sit here soaking in the idea that no one else would love me that way. when it was i that taught you. when it was i that showed you how to fill. the way i needed to be filled. how cruel i was to myself. giving you credit for my warmth simply because you had felt it. thinking it was you who gave me strength. wit. beauty. simply because you recognized it. as if i was already not these things before i met you. as if i did not remain all these things after you left.

i am sending my love to your eyes. may they always see goodness in people. and may you always practice kindness. may we see each other as one. may we be nothing short of in love with everything the universe has to offer. and may we always stay grounded. rooted. our feet planted firmly onto the earth.

i don't blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me. sometimes i stay up thinking of all the places you are hurting which you'll never care to mention. i come from the same aching blood. from the same bone so desperate for attention i collapse in on myself. i am your daughter. i know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. cause it is the only way i know how to tell you.

the idea that we are so capable of love but still choose to be toxic

To hate Is an easy lazy thing But to love Takes strength Everyone has But not all are Willing to practice

sex takes the consent of two if one person is lying there not doing anything cause they are not ready or not in the mood or simply don't want to yet the other is having sex with their body it's not love it is rape

I know I should crumble for better reasons but have you seen that boy he brings the sun to its knees every night.

the rape will tear you in half but it will not end you

accept that you deserve more than painful love life is moving the healthiest thing for your heart is to move with it

what is it with you and sunflowers he asks i point to the field of yellow outside sunflowers worship the sun i tell him only when it arrives do they rise when the sun leaves they bow their heads in mourning that is what the sun does to those flowers it's what you do to me - the sun and her flowers

yes it is possible to hate and love someone at the same time i do it to myself every day

he only whispers i love you as he slips his hands down the waistband of your pants. this is where you must understand the difference between want and need—you may want that boy but you certainly don't need him

i learned love is about giving. everything. and letting it hurt. i learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft.

wish pure love and soft peace upon the ones who've been unkind to you and keep moving forward - this will free you both

you are a mirror if you continue to starve yourself of love you'll only meet people who'll starve you too if you soak yourself in love the universe will hand you those who'll love you too - a simple math

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

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

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it's just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't love is fighting out all the kind sweetness we deserve and when someone shows up saying they will provide it as you do but their actions seem to break you rather than build you love is knowing whom to choose

you call me to tell me you miss me i turn to face the front door of the house waiting for a knock days later you call to say you need me but still aren't here the dandelions on the lawn are rolling their eyes in disappointment the grass has declared you yesterday's news what do i care if you love me or miss me or need me when you aren't doing anything about it if i'm not the love of your life i'll be the greatest loss instead

i can't tell if my mother is terrified or in love with my father it all looks the same i flinch when you touch me i fear it is him

you lose everything when you don't love yourself - and gain everything when you do

Sometimes I stop myself from saying the words out loud as if leaving my mouth too often might wear them down - I love you

i want to leave this place knowing i did something with my body other than trying to make it look perfect

your mother is in the habit of offering more love than you can carry your father is absent you are a war the border between two countries the collateral damage the paradox that joins the two but also splits them apart

he says i am sorry i am not an easy person to want i look at him surprised who said i wanted easy i don’t crave easy i crave goddamn difficult

love is not cruel/ we are cruel/ love is not a game/ we have made a game/ out of love

on the first day of love you wrapped me in the word special

love is not cruel we are cruel love is not a game we have made a game out of love

love is knowing whom to choose

i will tell you about selfish people. even when they know they will hurt you they walk into your life to taste you because you are the type of being they don’t want to miss out on. you are too much shine to not be felt. so when they have gotten a good look at everything you have to offer. when they have taken your skin your hair and your secrets with them. when they realize how real this is. how much of a storm you are and it hits them. that is when the cowardice sets in. that is when the person you thought they were is replaced by the sad reality of what they are. that is when they lose every fighting bone in their body and leave after saying you will find better than me. you will stand there naked with half of them still hidden somewhere inside you and sob. asking them why they did it. why they forced you to love them when they had no intention of loving you back and they’ll say something along the lines of i just had to try. i had to give it a chance. it was you after all. but that isn’t romantic. it isn’t sweet. the idea that they were so engulfed by your existence they had to risk breaking it for the sake of knowing they weren’t the one missing out. your existence meant that little next to their curiosity of you.

he was supposed to be the first male love of your life you still search for him everywhere - father

how can she love a man who is busy loving someone he can never get his hands on again.

what love looks like what does love look like the therapist asks one week after the breakup and i’m not sure how to answer her question except for the fact that i thought love looked so much like you that’s when it hit me and i realized how naive i had been to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person as if anybody on this entire earth could encompass all love represented as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for would look like a five foot eleven medium-sized brown-skinned guy who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast what does love look like the therapist asks again this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence and at this point i’m about to get up and walk right out the door except i paid too much money for this hour so instead i take a piercing look at her the way you look at someone when you’re about to hand it to them lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation eyes digging deeply into theirs searching for all the weak spots they have hidden somewhere hair being tucked behind the ears as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation on the philosophies or rather disappointments of what love looks like well i tell her i don’t think love is him anymore if love was him he would be here wouldn’t he if he was the one for me wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me if love was him it would have been simple i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat i think love never was i think i just wanted something was ready to give myself to something i believed was bigger than myself and when i saw someone who probably fit the part i made it very much my intention to make him my counterpart and i lost myself to him he took and he took wrapped me in the word special until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me hands only to feel me a body only to be with me oh how he emptied me how does that make you feel interrupts the therapist well i said it kind of makes me feel like shit maybe we’re looking at it wrong we think it’s something to search for out there something meant to crash into us on our way out of an elevator or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore looking the right amount of sexy and intellectual but i think love starts here everything else is just desire and projection of all our wants needs and fantasies but those externalities could never work out if we didn’t turn inward and learn how to love ourselves in order to love other people love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don’t love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve and when someone shows up saying they will provide it as you do but their actions seem to break you rather than build you love is knowing who to choose

I’ve had sex, she said But I don’t know What making love Feels like

day by day i realize everything i miss about you was never there in the first place - the person i fell in love with was a mirage

accept that you deserve more than painful love

we need more love not from men but from ourselves and each other

it means nothing to me if he loves you if he can’t do a single wretched thing about it

he isn't coming back whispered my head he has to sobbed my heart

i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like when i am sad i don’t cry i pour when i am happy i don’t smile i glow when i am angry i don’t yell i burn the good thing about feeling in extremes is when i love i give them wings but perhaps that isn’t such a good thing cause they always tend to leave and you should see me when my heart is broken i don’t grieve i shatter

this is the recipe of life said my mother as she held me in her arms as i wept think of those flowers you plant in the garden each year they will teach you that people too must wilt fall root rise in order to bloom

I understand this world broke you. It has been so hard on your feet. I don't blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me. Sometimes I stay up thinking of all the places you are hurting which you'll never care to mention. I come from the same aching blood. From the same bone so desperate for attention I collapse in on myself. I am your daughter. I know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. Cause it's the only way I know how to tell you.

i could not contain myself any longer i ran to the ocean in the middle of the night and confessed my love for you to the water as i finished telling her the salt in her body became sugar

where do we go from here my love when it's over and i'm standing between us whose side do i run to when every nerve in my body is pulsing for you when my mouth waters at the thought when you are pulling me in just by standing there how do i turn around and choose myself

i do not need the kind of love that is draining i want someone who energizes me

i need someone who knows struggle as well as i do someone willing to hold my feet in their lap on days it is too difficult to stand the type of person who gives exactly what i need before i even know i need it the type of lover who hears me even when i do not speak is the type of understanding i demand - the type of lover i need

i am your daughter. i know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. cause it is the only way i know how to tell you.

that’s the thing about love it marinates your lips till the only word your mouth remembers is his name

you might not have been my first love but you were the love that made all the other loves irrelevant

it has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of my life. i learned everything is temporary. moments. feelings. people. flowers. i learned love is about giving. everything. and letting it hurt. i learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft. i learned all things come in twos. life and death. pain and joy. salt and sugar. me and you. it is the balance of the universe. it has been the year of hurting so bad but living so good. making friends out of strangers. making strangers out of friends. learning mint chocolate chip ice cream will fix just about everything. and for the pains it can’t there will always be my mother’s arms. we must learn to focus on warm energy. always. soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the world. for if we can’t learn to be kind to each other how will we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of ourselves.

I love that about us how capable we are of feeling how unafraid we are of breaking and tend to our wounds with grace just being a woman calling myself a woman makes me utterly whole and complete

i'd be lying if i said you make me speechless the truth is you make my tongue so weak it forgets what language to speak in

neither of us is happy but neither of us wants to leave so we keep breaking one another and calling it love

the one who arrives after you will remind me love is supposed to be soft he will taste like the poetry i wish i could write

i love that about us how capable we are of feeling how unafraid we are of breaking

i didn't leave because i stopped loving you i left because the longer i stayed the less i loved myself

i am loving myself out of the dark.

love made the danger in you look like safety

my voice is the offspring of two countries colliding what is there to be ashamed of if english and my mother tongue made love my voice is her father's words and mother's accent what does it matter if my mouth carries two worlds - accent

love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't

don’t ask me why i didn’t leave he made my world so small i couldn’t see the exit - i’m surprised i got out at all

how do i welcome in kindness when i have only practiced spreading my legs for the terrifying what am i to do with you if my idea of love is violence but you are sweet if your concept of passion is eye contact but mine is rage how can i call this intimacy if i crave sharp edges but your edges aren't even edges they are soft landings how do i teach muself to accept a healthy love if all i've ever known is pain

sometimes i love you means i want to love you sometimes i love you means i’ll stay a little while longer sometimes i love you means i’m not sure how to leave sometimes i love you means i have nowhere else to go

there is a difference between someone telling you they love you and them actually loving you

it takes grace to remain kind in cruel situations fall in love with your solitude

Love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it's just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve

i want you to wipe away everything you know about love and start with one word kindness give it to them let them give it to you be two pillars equal in your love and you’ll carry empires on your backs

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.

when you plunged the knife into me you also began bleeding my wound became your wound didn't you know love is a double-edged knife you will suffer the way you make me suffer

Love speaks to The soul In a language The brain Can’t comprehend.

why am i always running in circles between wanting you to want me and when you want me deciding it is too emotionally naked for me to live with why do i make loving me so difficult as if you should never have to witness the ghosts i have tucked under my breast i used to be more open when it came to matters like this my love - if only we’d met when i was that willing

father. you always call to say nothing in particular. you ask what i'm doing or where i am and when the silence stretches like a lifetime between us i scramble to find questions to keep the conversation going. what i long to say most is. i understand this world broke you. it has been so hard on your feet. i don't blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me. sometimes i stay up thinking of all the places you are hurting which you'll never care to mention. i come from the same aching blood. from the same bone so desperate for attention i collapse in on myself. i am your daughter. i know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. cause it is the only way I know how to tell you.

there is a list of questions i want to ask but never will there is a list of questions i go through in my head every time i'm alone and my mind can't stop itself from searching for you there is a list of questions i want to ask so if you're listening somewhere here i am asking them what do you think happens to the love that's left behind when two lovers leave how blue do you think it gets before it passes away does it pass away or does it still exist somewhere waiting for us to come back when we lied to ourselves by calling this unconditional and left which one of us hurt more i shattered into a million little pieces and those pieces shattered into a million more crumbled into dust till there was nothing left of me but the silence tell me how love how did the grieving feel for you how did the mourning hurt how did you peel your eyes open after every blink knowing i'd never be there staring back it must be hard to live with what ifs there must always be this constant dull aching in the pit of your stomach trust me i feel it too how in the world did we get here how did we live through it and how are we still living how many months did it take before you stopped thinking of me or are you still thinking of me cause if you are then maybe i am too thinking of you thinking of me with me in me around me everywhere you and me and us do you still touch yourself to the thoughts of me do you still imagine my naked naked tiny tiny body pressed into yours do you still imagine the curve of my spine and how you wanted to rip it out of me cause the way it dipped into my perfectly rounded bottom drove you crazy baby sugar baby sweet baby ever since we left how many times did you pretend it was my hand stroking you how many times did you search for me in your fantasies and end up crying instead of coming don't you lie to me i can tell when you're lying cause there's always that little bit of arrogance in your response are you angry with me are you okay and would you tell me if you're not and if we ever see each other again do you think you'd reach out and hold me like you said you would the last time we spoke and you talked of the next time we would or do you think we'd just look shake in our skin as we pine to absorb as much as we can of each other cause by this time we've probably got someone else waiting at home we were good together weren't we and is it wrong that i'm asking you these questions tell me love that you have been looking for these answers too

when love comes love will hold you love will call your name and you will melt sometimes though love will hurt you but love will never mean to love will play no games cause love knows life has been hard enough already

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

if i’m not the love of your life i’ll be the greatest loss instead

wish pure love and soft peace upon the ones who’ve been unkind to you and keep moving forward - this will free you both

i am confident i am over you. so much that some mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and my hands pressed together thanking the universe for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank god you left. i would not be the empire i am today if you had stayed. but then. there are some nights i imagine what i might do if you showed up. how if you walked into the room this very second every awful thing you’ve ever done would be tossed out the closet window and all the love would rise up again. it would pour through my eyes as if it never really left in the first place. as if it’s been practicing how to stay silent so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival. can someone explain that. how even when the love leaves. it doesn’t leave. how even when i am so past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you.

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don’t love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve

and then there are days when the simple act of breathing leaves you exhausted. it seems easier to give up on this life. the thought of disappearing brings you peace. for so long i was lost in a place where there was no sun. where there grew no flowers. but every once in a while out of the darkness something i loved would emerge and bring me to life again. witnessing a starry sky. the lightness of laughing with old friends. a reader who told me the poems had saved their life. yet there i was struggling to save my own. my darlings. living is difficult. it is difficult for everybody. and it is at that moment when living feels like crawling through a pin-sized hole. that we must resist the urge of succumbing to bad memories. refuse to bow before bad months or bad years. cause our eyes are starving to feast on this world. there are so many turquoise bodies of water left for us to dive in. there is family. blood or chosen. the possibility of falling in love. with people and places. hills high as the moon. valleys that roll into new worlds. and road trips. i find it deeply important to accept that we are not the masters of this place. we are her visitors. and like guests let’s enjoy this place like a garden. let us treat it with a gentle hand. so the ones after us can experience it too. let’s find our own sun. grow our own flowers. the universe delivered us with the light and the seeds. we might not hear it at times but the music is always on. it just needs to be turned louder. for as long as there is breath in our lungs—we must keep dancing.