Sarah Kay Quotes

“Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.”

— Sarah Kay

“I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.”

— Sarah Kay

“Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.”

— Sarah Kay

“But I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both. I want to share every single one of your sunshines and save them for later. I will tuck them into my pockets so I can give them back to you when the rain falls hard. Friend, I want to be the mirror that reminds you to love yourself. I want to be the air in your lungs that reminds you to breath. When the walls come down, when the thunder rumbles, when nobody else is home, hold my hand, and I promise I won't let go.”

— Sarah Kay

“You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.”

— Sarah Kay

“You are a woman. Skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat. You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies, not excuses.”

— Sarah Kay

“Such a little thing really, a kiss ... most people don't give it a moment's consideration. They kiss on meeting, they kiss on parting, that simple touching of flesh is taken entirely for granted as a basic human right.”

— Sarah Kay

They'll be days like this" my momma said.
When you open your hands to catch, and wind up with only blisters and bruises.
When you try to step out of the phone booth and try to fly , and the very people you want to save, are the ones standing on your cape.
When your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees with disappointment
And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say "Thank you".

— Sarah Kay

“My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.”

— Sarah Kay

Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night

— Sarah Kay

“Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory.”

— Sarah Kay

“Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried.”

— Sarah Kay

“Some nights, I wake up knowing he is anxious. He is across the world in another woman's arms and the years have spread us like dandelion seeds, sanding down the edges of our jigsaw parts that used to only fit each other”

— Sarah Kay

You are not made of metaphors,
Not apologies, not excuses.

— Sarah Kay

“There was no secret I did not tell him, there was no moment we did not share. We didn't grow up, we grew in; like ivy wrapping, molding each other into perfect yins and yangs”

— Sarah Kay

“You're just smelling for smoke
so you can follow the trail
back to a burning house,
so you can find the boy
who lost everything in the fire
to see if you can save him.
Or else
find the boy
who lit the fire
in the first place,
to see if you
can change him.”

— Sarah Kay

“I love you
as much as the ocean
kisses the shore
no matter how many times
it is sent away.”

— Sarah Kay

“I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.”

— Sarah Kay

“Be careful, darling. Your footsteps land heavy here. Your racket will wake the dragons.”

— Sarah Kay

“Because rain will wash away everything, if you let it.”

— Sarah Kay

“If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.”

— Sarah Kay

“A sky still fits the ignition. There just isn't anything left to drive.”

— Sarah Kay

“At this point in my life - age 24 - I have chosen a fairly strange path that not many are walking. I am a professional spoken word poet who tours the world performing and teaching. I run an organization called Project VOICE dedicated to using this art form as an education and empowerment tool in schools and communities of all kinds.”

— Sarah Kay

Perusing colorful storylines on the backs of book jackets, I realized that none of them could possibly be as dramatic as my life to date. Then sadly, I also realized I could never find the ending of my story from the safety of an armchair.

— Sarah Kay

“Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.”

— Sarah Kay

Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.

— Sarah Kay

“My first spoken word poem, packed with all the wisdom of a 14-year-old, was about the injustice of being seen as unfeminine. The poem was very indignant, and mainly exaggerated, but the only spoken word poetry that I had seen up until that point was mainly indignant, so I thought that that's what was expected of me.”

— Sarah Kay

“Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.”

— Sarah Kay

“I use poetry to help me work through what I don't understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that I've been.”

— Sarah Kay

Poetry is like pooping. If there is a poem inside of you, it has to come out. Sometimes it can be really difficult and take longer than you'd like (it may even be painful), but other times it can be really easy and happen much faster than you expected. But either way - it is important, and it feels so much better when it's done.

— Sarah Kay

“I love books that create worlds for me that I don't want to leave. I recently lost my entire life to Haruki Murakami - 1Q84. I tell people that book ruined my life in the best possible way. I couldn't think of anything else for weeks after I read it.”

— Sarah Kay

I have always thought of poetry as an act of celebration. Just by nature of writing a poem you are taking the time to dwell on whatever it is that you're writing about ... you can be celebrating anger, you can be celebrating sorrow ... you are spending the time to focus and observe and try to understand the various parts of being human.

— Sarah Kay

There are parts of me I only recognize from photographs.

— Sarah Kay

“Ever hear that expression, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"? That's what high school was like for me. Both of those - all the time.”

— Sarah Kay

“Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you've done something wrong but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.”

— Sarah Kay

“One of my highest priorities as an educator is to be as inclusive as possible.”

— Sarah Kay

“I want [my daughter] to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind.”

— Sarah Kay

“Ever since I was little, I've loved making hand-made cards and presents and arts & crafts for people.”

— Sarah Kay

“Poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me. I like to poem my way through tricky questions and ideas. That's about the only consistent thread through my poem-creation process.”

— Sarah Kay

Hands learn more than minds do, hands learn how to hold other hands ...

— Sarah Kay

“My first performance poem was about how sometimes I was teased for being manly, or a tomboy or whatever. It was saying how just because I looked a certain way and displayed myself a certain way didn't mean that I wasn't also a feminine human ... a woman if you will.”

— Sarah Kay

“My falling in love with spoken word poetry definitely came out of that time period where all the adults around me were failing to supply me with any answers. Everyone was too busy dealing with things that were more important. I was pretty lost and invisible. And all of a sudden, this world opened up where I could get on stage and perform in front of my peers. People would listen to me and see me, and people would say, "That thing you created was important." And that was so validating and necessary at that specific moment.”

— Sarah Kay

“I don't think it's about art being a career but it's about making sure that if art is something that you love, something that brings you joy, it's about you having a duty to find time in your life for that thing that brings you joy ... even if it can only be a small amount.”

— Sarah Kay

“I don't think I ever had a morning where I woke up and said I'm going to be a professional poet. I know I've always loved poetry, I've always loved writing poetry and I've always loved sharing poetry. I've also always known that I wanted that to somehow be a very large part of my life and I'm very fortunate that it's such a large part of my life.”

— Sarah Kay

“When words become a poem, it makes sense to me, but I don't know how to explain to someone why the words are the way they are. It's just the logic of the poem to me.”

— Sarah Kay

“I want to welcome folks to poetry, especially those who may have previously felt unwelcome; I want to celebrate everyone who is trying to make sense of this world through poetry the way I try to.”

— Sarah Kay

“I think that poetry is an act of celebration, that anytime you're writing a poem, it means that you're celebrating something, even if it's a sad poem, if it's an angry poem, a political poem or anything at all. The fact that you're taking the time and energy to pick up this thing and hold it to the light, and say, "Let's take some time to consider this," means that you've deemed it worthy enough to spend time on - which, in my opinion, is celebrating.”

— Sarah Kay

“I write poetry to figure things out. Any time I'm trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me.”

— Sarah Kay

“I do like celebrating women, I do like celebrating different lifestyles and choices and people and it makes me happy when others find my work empowering.”

— Sarah Kay

Thinking about writing as an act of celebration is sometimes a helpful framework for me. It allows me to prioritize what I want to call attention to and what I want others to know about me. It makes me ask: What is worth celebrating?

— Sarah Kay