Andrea Gibson Quotations

Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.

Political poems are love poems, and then love poems can be political in this society where people can be so separated from each other.

He is over in Iraq now, ... I worry every day when I wake up. 'How's he doing? I haven't heard from him, what's going on?' Every once in awhile I get an email and he'll say, 'I'm okay, I love you' and that's pretty much how it is.

The purpose of Engage is to raise awareness and promote undergraduate research among the student body.

I’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark.

Sometimes the break in your heart is like the hole in the flute. Sometimes it’s the place where the music comes through.

I don't have a single plan for my life more important than learning to love people well.

I'm good at loving books. I'm good at loving soft bed sheets. I'm good at loving coffees and teas. I am good at loving things that can't love me back, that don't have the power to leave. And maybe, that's why I love them.

You can find me on the moon waxing and waning. My heart full of petals, every single one begging 'Love me, love me, love me. Whoever I am. Whoever I become.'

What I know about living is the pain is never just ours Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window When I can see what I couldn’t see before, through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds. So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better

I have always been comfortable weathering the storm. I’d like to get more comfortable weathering the sunny day.

I’m never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back, and I’m never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already. When we all know everyone’s life has been hard enough already it’s hard to watch the game we make of love, like everyone’s playing checkers with their scars, saying checkmate whenever they get out without a broken heart. Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.

Lately I've been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and how I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be. And when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: before I die, I want to be somebody's favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.

If you were to press your heart close up against somebody else’s heart eventually your hearts will start beating at the same time. And two little babies in an incubator, their hearts will beat at the same time. Love that. So if you have somebody in your life that is prone to anxiety, like myself, and if you happen to be a calm person, you could come up and hug me heart to heart and my heart hopefully would slow to yours. And I just love that idea. Or maybe yours would speed up to mine. But either way, we’ll be there together.

Commit to loving yourself completely. It’s the most radical thing you will do in your lifetime.

Know you belong here. You belong here and everything you feel is okay.

I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color, but I’ve seen flowers bloom at midnight. I’ve seen kites fly in gray skies and they were real close to looking like the sunrise, and sometime it takes the most wounded wings the most broken things to notice how strong the breeze is, how precious the flight.

You never wish on shooting stars. You wish on the ones that have the courage to shine where they are.

It's your worst sin saving your f***ing life; It's the devil's knife carving holes into your soul so angels have a way to make their way inside; Life doesn't rhyme. Still, life is poetry, not math. The whole world's a stage, but the stage is a meditation mat. You tilt your head back; you breathe. when your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and you pray for rain.

You have a heart of gold and I am kneeling in your bloodstream panning for the only thing that has ever felt like home.

Do you think anger is a sincere emotion or the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?

...And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty, the color, the shape of the landscape you’re marching towards. Everyone knows what you’re against; show them what you’re for.

My heart is a parachute that has never opened in time.

and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.

Forests may be gorgeous but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns how to grow in a cemetery.

Don't google your name. Ever. Don't “search” for yourself on anything that glows in the dark. Don't let your beauty be something anyone can turn off. Don't edit your ugly out of your bio. Let your light come from the fire. Let your pain be the spark, but not the timber. Remember, you didn't come here to write your heart out. You came to write it in.

Everyone’s chest is a living room wall with awkwardly placed photographs hiding fist-shaped holes.

For Halloween I'm gonna be emotionally stable. No one's gonna know it's me.

Baby, I have no idea how this will end. Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the earth's hips and our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary or maybe tomorrow my absolute insanity combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills will leave us like a love letter in a landfill. But whatever, however, whenever this ends I want you to know that right now, I love you forever.

Touch me ‘til my ribs become piano keys, ‘til there is sheet music scrolled across the inside of my lungs.

Say this is what the pain made of you: an open, open, open road, an avalanche of feel it all.

Our insanity is not that we see people who aren’t there. It’s that we ignore the ones who are.

Sometimes the most healing thing to do is remind ourselves over and over and over, other people feel this too.

I know this world is far from perfect. I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon. I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that new born river that has to run through the center of our hearts to find its way home.

If a tree fell in the forest, and you were the only one there to hear it; if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?

I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean during a lightning storm cuz I'd rather be left for dead than wondering what thunder sounds like.

Every lover is a storm chaser. Every good heart has lost its roof.

That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out.

You can stand on the cliff of my heart and shout nothing but ‘ugly’ through me. I promise all I will echo back is ‘Beauty, beauty, you have always been beauty

Cause I might be naked and lonely Shaking branches for bones But I'm still time zones away From who I was the day before we met You were the first mile Where my heart broke a sweat And I wish you were here I wish you'd never left But mostly I wish you well I wish you my very very best.

I am living today as someone I had not yet become yesterday and tonight I will borrow only pieces of who I am today to carry with me to tomorrow.

..when a war ends, what does that look like exactly? do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves? does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother? when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold? yesterday i was told a story about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old, who cannot fall asleep because when she does she dreams of nothing but the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor's corpse. if you told her war is over do you think she can sleep?

I'm not lookin' for someone who can save me. Life rafts might keep you afloat but they rarely get you anywhere and I've got places I wanna go. So break me in two, peel back my rib cage and cover every page of my heart with love poems you will burn someday.

I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun; I know the heartbeat of his mother.

I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing

I could never trust anyone who's well adjusted to a sick society.

A doctor once told me I feel too much. I said, so does god. that’s why you can see the grand canyon from the moon.

Love is like sunshine. Sometimes you have to get burned to know you were there. I want to know that I'm here.

I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
 on a day you’re feeling good. 
I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
 on a day you’re feeling bad.
 I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty
 could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass.

I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.

We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.

My mouth is a fire escape. The words coming out don’t care that they are naked. There is something burning in there.

Let me also say I wanna make you sandwhiches, And soup, And peanut butter cookies, Though, the truth is peanutbutter is actually really bad for you 'cause they grow peanuts in old cotton fields to clean the toxins out of the soil, But hey, you like peanutbutter and I like you!

We are all instruments pulling the bows across our own lungs. Windmills, still startling in every storm. Have you ever seen a newborn blinking at the light? I wanna do that every day. I wanna know what the kite called itself when it got away, when it escaped into the night...

I intend to leave this life so shattered there's gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts

You panic button collector. You clock of beautiful ticks. You run out the door if you need to. You flock to the front row of your own class. You feather everything until you know you can always, always shake like a leaf on my family tree and know you belong here. You belong here and everything you feel is okay. Everything you feel is okay.

But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back. There is no bruise like the bruise loneliness kicks into your spine.

Right now there’s a man on the street outside my door with outstretched hands full of heartbeats no one can hear. He has cheeks like torn sheet music every tear-broken crescendo falling on deaf ears. At his side there’s a boy with eyes like an anthem no one stands up for.

I write because it is while I'm writing that I feel most connected to why we're here. I write because silence is a heavy weight to carry. I write to remember. I write to heal. I write to let the air in. I write as a practice of listening.

In your arms I forget what the yarn knows of sweaters. I forget how to hold myself together. So if I unfold now like a love letter tell me you'll write back soon. Tell me you'll still come untethered.

Do you know they found land mines in woman's souls.

The holy have done more damage to this world than the devil ever could.

To think, a sweater, is made entirely of knots. My stomach could clothe a village.

We all have bullets beneath our skin we pray our lovers won't flinch at when they find.

If love did not exist, I would be so goddamn sane.

I thought, "The flowers, save the flowers..." I never thought for a second we wouldn't save the people

How many wars will it take us to learn that only the dead return?

We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday.

Remember, you didn’t come here to write your heart out. You came to write it in.

But whatever However Whenever this ends I want you to know That right now I love you forever

Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground.

When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain.

We're boxed in and labeled before we're ever able to speak who we believe we are or who we dream we'll become.

None of us are pretty, but our ugly has an alibi.

I don't believe we're hateful. I think mostly we're just asleep, but the math adds up the same.

Yesterday i carved your name into the surface of an ice cube then held it against my chest til it melted into my aching pores today i cried so hard the neighbors knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar.

You keep worrying you’re taking up too much space. I wish you’d let yourself be the milky way.

We have to create; it is the only thing louder than destruction.

I am wrong more often than i am writing and even then i am often wrong

The trauma said, ‘Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.

My heart is still a leather jacket I am waiting to give to someone sweet.

I’ve written this poem before but always through a window, never through an open door.

Hey, are you a boy or a — never mind, can I have a push on the swing?” And some day, y’all, when we grow up, it’s all gonna be that simple.

What Gods do you believe in? I'll build you a temple of mirrors so you can see them.

If you’re handing out flashlights in the dark, start handing out stars.

And we were Banksy on an overpass in New Orleans spray-painting porch lights on the hurricane. We were welcome mats for the un-forgiven. We never sold our windpipes to make a living. We were the letters sent to the wrong address, but opened anyway. We opened anyway.

Safety isn't always safe. You can find one on every gun.

Remind me that the most fertile lands were built by the fires of volcanoes.

You are not weak just because your heart feels so empty.

So guess what, if I ever have my own team I am picking everyone first even the worst kid and the kid with the stutter like a skipping record 'cause I know all of us are scratched, even if you can't hear it when we speak.

Love isn't always magic. But if I offered my body to the magician, if I told him to cut me in half so after that I could come to you whole and ask for you back would you listen for this dark alley love song? For the winter we heated our home from the steam off our own bodies?

Everything but "I LOVE YOU" is small talk.

Touch me 'til my ribs become piano keys.

If you ever reach enlightenment. will you remember how to laugh?

This is my heartbeat like yours, it is a hatchet It can build a house or tear one down.

This is my body. It is no one's but mine.

Yes, I like girls; Yes, I like boys; I like boys who like boys; I like girls who wear toys and girls who don't; I like girls who don't call themselves girls; Crew cuts or curls or that really bad hair phase in between.

You can have a cold war with yourself, even in the summertime

Love isn't always magic. Sometimes it's just melting.

Your ignorance keeps dismembering every piece of patience I have left.