Counting Crows Quotes

“We didn’t call it a date, but it felt like one—the kind of electric connection that exists in the spaces between words, the moments when you forget the world and just exist with someone who makes you feel alive.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“He wasn’t just Gus; he was possibility, the ‘what if’ that echoed through every choice I made to leave behind the chaos for the comfort of the known. And yet, I never stopped wondering—what if I had chosen differently?”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“I carried Iran in my veins and America in my dreams, but neither felt like home. I existed somewhere in between—a place where belonging meant letting go of both.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“Freedom isn’t the absence of rules; it’s the ability to decide which ones you’ll break for the life you want to live.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“How do you paint the pieces of a life you can’t quite remember, but feel in every aching part of your soul? Gus wasn’t just a memory—I was trying to create him, to pull him from the void of my past and place him on a canvas I could finally understand.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“Those crows, those damn, bad-luck crows. It’s all their fault.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“Mom would always say, ‘We’re in Iran, but this house is America. Here, we’re free. We watch what we want, listen to what we want, do what we want.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“I leaped over the American flag painted on the ground. I couldn’t bring myself to step on it. Never. I had one proudly hung on my bedroom wall.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“If they found out who he really was, they would be even harsher on me. A mini drug lord, a good-looking asshole who was always high.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“The flag on the pole drooped like a hanged dead body. Off in the distance, students were talking and laughing, oblivious to the weight pressing down on me.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“I hated how easily she could flip her mood because some random guy took an interest. She was only eleven.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“Back in middle school, I was expelled for wearing clear nail polish.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“The headmistress grabbed my file and slapped it into my chest. ‘Take your bad attitude somewhere else.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“Two men as old as my dad on a noisy bike passed by and yelled, ‘I wanna eat your cunt!”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“The school hijab felt like a heavy blanket—a reminder of a life I was desperate to escape.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“She told me, ‘Never ever put me in this situation again. Your problems are yours to solve.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“In Iran, where beauty was considered a sin, this youth and beauty were nothing short of troublesome.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“You’re not a kid, my daughter… Prophet Mohammad’s wife was nine years old when he married her!”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“If you cover your hair, my dear, no one would bother you!”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“I never fully understood what it meant to identify as a woman while living in Iran. I never understood it outside of Iran, either.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“What is womanhood, really? It’s about the relentless grind of it—the moment your body betrays you, when you realize your identity will always feel like something to defend.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“I think of Mia and transitioning… so desperate to embrace womanhood, to claim it for herself.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“To fall for whoever we wanted, to live in bursts of pleasure and unplanned moments, accidental loves, simply to be, to exist, to savor the fleeting sweetness of life without guilt, without suffering.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“It’s not the absence of a child I miss. It’s the power to decide.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“For me, the past is a sack of garbage that needs to be left outdoors to be picked up.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to paint all this time. Not Gus, not motherhood, not even myself. But that quiet, unspoken loss.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“The weight of the lies I tell are choking me, but I can’t bear the thought of being anything less than a woman in his eyes.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows

“It’s funny how a city can feel so alive yet make you feel so small.”
― Neda Aria, Counting Crows