The Counting-Downers Quotes

“Sometimes absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it just makes the heart hurt.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Nobody sees me like you do, and without you, I’ll be invisible. I exist because you see me.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“I’m a feeler. I feel everything deep within my core. Even when I don’t want to. I don’t know where my emotions stop and my empathy begins. I feel from the tips of my toes to the follicles of my head. I feel with every fiber, every molecule, every tissue, marrow, muscle, and bone in my body. I feel.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“A memory is never as good as a moment.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Although we try to control it in a million different ways, the only things you can ever really do to time are enjoy it, or waste it. That’s it.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Let me be the type man who plants a field of flowers so you can be the type of woman who picks them.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“This is one of those moments when I wish I could be young forever. Not just stop time for a second, but for an eternity.

The old paradox that youth is wasted on the young is not true for us. Neither I nor my friends take our youth for granted.

In fact, all of the young people I know are all too aware that someday soon time and gravity won’t be on their side anymore.

And there’s nothing we can do about it. So the young do the only thing they can do. They live and they love and they dance and they sing, they dream and they scheme, they ponder and they plan.

Like there’s no tomorrow. For tomorrow brings us one day closer to the inevitable and one day further from the impossible.

And being young is all about achieving the impossible. Or at least believing you can. The old mistake our denial for ignorance, our immaturity for irresponsibility.

We understand the rules of life, we just don’t want to play by them.

Not yet.

Not today.

Not tonight.

Because tonight is a good night to be young and alive.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“We each get twenty-four hours.
1,440 minutes.
86,400 seconds.

Every day for the rest of your days.

You can’t make more, or give any away.

But you can prioritize them for the right people, or waste them on the wrong ones.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Love is not standing in someone’s shadow, it’s basking in their light. The blinding strength of your light combined pushes the darkness away.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“I would lose him a thousand lifetimes over if it meant I got the chance to love him a thousand times. And have him love me back.

If only for a little while.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Things can’t mend without being broken.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“We live and learn, change and grow. Older, but not always wiser. Stronger but not necessarily smarter. Life is a dance of steps taken forward and backwards, time spent standing still, and twirling in circles as we follow our own shadows.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Adequate photographers use their sight, good photographers use their senses, and great photographers use their souls.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Legacies are not just for legends. Whether a million people know your name, or only one person does, you still have the right to leave your mark on the world, even if it’s only in your tiny corner of it, in the tiniest of ways.

Not all of us will achieve great heights and feats. Most of us will never leave our hometown or country, let alone conquer Everest. And you know what? That’s okay.

Because real life is what happens in between moments of greatness. It’s the little things that at the end of it all, you realize were greater than the sum of their parts. It’s the amount of times you laughed, or cried, danced, sang, created, inspired, and made someone smile.

The best kind of legacies are the ones that are unseen. You’ll never fully be able to measure the effect of a smile or a kind word, but I promise you, the most whispered phrase can send a shockwave around the world that lasts for centuries, or even an eternity.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“We kiss with our eyes closed but our senses open, infusing the spaces between with the elements of the other.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“I loved him before I knew him. I missed him before I met him. We were soulmates long before we were strangers.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Bad friends try to change you, good friends accept your differences, while true friends embrace and celebrate them. Watching this circle of clowns, I know I've made the truest of friends. I'm glad I didn't settle for anything else.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“All great adventures start with an idea.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“I will fight death for my right to live until my last breath.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Grief is always amplified in silence.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Our eyes are closed, but even without seeing, they’re only for each other.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“We’ve gotten to that stage all soulmates reach of speaking in broken phrases and incomplete sentences, our connected and all-knowing minds filling in the blanks left by redundant words.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Drowning in the majesty of the constellations is a reminder that the universe was here long before us, and it will be here long after we’re gone.

When our bones become nothing but ash and earth, the world will keep on spinning.

People will die, cry, love, and live as if we never were.

But we are now. And that’s all that matters.

In this moment, we are.

Nothing but a boy and a girl.

On the cusp of something greater than ourselves.

Entering into the unknown and hoping we make it out the other side.

With a strong sense of ourselves and only a faint idea of who we want to be.

We are what we are.

And we. are. now.

Young, free, alive.

Here, together, loved.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“There are two types of women. The ones who wait to receive flowers and the ones who go out and pick them.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Sometimes things don’t have to have a point. There’s a special kind of beauty and freedom in the just because.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“I’m no longer on the outside looking in, but on the inside looking around. This new vantage point makes all the difference. It’s amazing how a change of perspective can change a life.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Learning takes a lifetime and even the geniuses among us die ignorant. You should always want to learn, to grow, to improve. Otherwise what’s the point? You may as well just give up and die. There’s always new things to see, people to meet, lessons to learn. Life is both a classroom and a teacher. We’ll always be the students, never the professors.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“I was only able to move forward once I let go of my fear of leaving him behind.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Be the person you want people to one day say you were. And start now. Because the timeless truth remains that time is running out for all of us, ready or not.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers

“Love is not standing in someone’s shadow, it’s basking in their light. The blinding strength of your light combined pushes the darkness away.

True love is not two half-lives joining together to form a perfect circle. It’s two people who were whole to begin with. Their individual circles join and overlap like a Venn diagram where their souls sit in-between, sharing the space instead of competing for it.

And when you are around them, there’s no such thing as too close. You try to capture their whispered words with your lips so that they don’t escape and reach anyone else’s ears. You press your body up against theirs with a quiet sense of desperation, resenting the layers of skin and muscle which prevent you from sinking into their bones.”
― A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers