Darrius > Darrius's Quotes

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“I sit before flowers
hoping they will train me in the art
of opening up

I stand on mountain tops believing
that avalanches will teach me to let go

I know
nothing

but I am here to learn.”
― Shane Koyczan

“If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.’

[Blueprint for a Breakthrough (2013)]”
― Shane Koyczan

“And you are worth the time it takes to take the time to get to know you. We've managed to muttle through the awkward stage of i like you and you like me, but when we both finally said 'yes' life became a multiple choice test, not knowing anything we became each others best guess. and, holding your hand is less like exploration and more like discovery. lady, i don't have to study you to be sure. you're the choice i made before i knew what the other choices were”
― Shane Koyczan

“And as for romance? Well, I want that too.
I want to fall asleep next to you, 100 times a night,
so I can know you 100 times better before we hit the day light. And despite all of this,
I also want amnesia so I can relive each kiss with a perfect newness
that leaves me smashed in the arms of rapture. I want the sky to fracture under
the impossible weight of an apology because I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I want so much.
I'm sorry that I'm using "I'm sorry" as a crutch to lean on for so long
but if you sing me that song of sweet logic again then I promise to make the effort
to stand on my own. There is a reason that our hearts are more like a muscle
and less like a bone. I've known so many people who've have grown up flexing
in front of mirrors and falling for their own reflection as if that's adequate but that's bullshit.
Because we only get now until the time we go and if they've only got time to love themselves
then nobody is going to be around to hear the sound of their heartbeat echo.
So lady, don't expect an apology when I tell you I'm only held together
by a heart that pumps blue, it's the strongest muscle in my body and I'm flexing it for you”
― Shane Koyczan

“but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong”
― Shane Koyczan

“and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
― SHANE KOYCZAN

“Don't tell me you're not beautiful. You're the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight.”
― Shane Koyczan

“We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them.”
― Shane Koyczan

“We so seldom understand each other. But if understanding is neither here nor there, and the universe is infinite, then understand that no matter where we go we will always be smack dab in the middle of nowhere. All we can do is share some piece of ourselves, and hope that it’s remembered. Hope that we meant something to someone”
― Shane Koyczan

“I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.”
― Shane Koyczan

“I’m not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we’d be lonely forever
that we’d never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
that there’s no way for it to metastasize

it does”
― Shane Koyczan

“What I said was
I’ll miss you
what I meant to say was
I love you
what I wanted to say was
that I meant what I said
and it’s funny
how all those things I
could have said
flooded my head after we said goodbye
and I should have told you
I’d be willing to hold you
until my flesh crumbles into bone
because I’m willing to die alone
but god knows I don’t want to live that way.”
― Shane Koyczan

“I don't want to turn any of this into poetry / but / you're so beautiful / flowers turn their heads to smell you”
― Shane Koyczan, Visiting Hours

“I sit before flowers

hoping they will train me in the art

of opening up”
― Shane Koyczan

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“There's terrible evil in the world."

It comes from men," said Holly. "All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“A great man is always willing to be little.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
― Harry S. Truman

“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.”
― Ronald Reagan

“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Having a low opinion of yourself is not 'modesty.' It's self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not 'egotism.' It's a necessary precondition to happiness and success.”
― Bobbe Sommer

“I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

“When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit