Explore Quotes by Shane Koyczan

That’s what we were told—stand up for yourself. But that’s hard to do if you don’t know who you are.

I have loved this life. I smile because I have tiny dreams that play hopscotch at the corners of my mouth. And every time I breathe they float, every time I laugh, they fly kites.

Look directly into every mirror. Realize our reflection is the first sentence to a story, and our story starts: We were here.

But we are more than genteel or civilized/ we are an idea in the process of being realized.

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 toolshed. So broken heartstrings bled the blues, and we tried to empty ourselves so we'd feel nothing. Don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone...

To discover the thing you're brilliant at you first have to endure realizing all the things you're average at.

Our lives will only ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty.

Don't tell me that [broken heartstrings] hurt 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.

If you can't see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror.

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.

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.

Sometimes becoming drug free has less to do with addiction and more to do with sanity.

I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.

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

We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them.

I you can't see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror. Look a little closer, stare a little longer. Because there is 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.

A question like “do you love me?” was an itch our doctors told us not to scratch.

My heart is a protest that I let rally against my ribs.

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.

I've been told that people in the army do more by 7:00 am than I do in an entire day But if I wake at 6:59 am and turn to you to trace the outline of your lips with mine I will have done enough and killed no one in the process.

Someone once told me that the finer points of devotion are about the size of a pinhole, and there are millions of them. And if you could connect each dot, then you’ve got a diagram of what you think you thought you knew, and if you’re willing to admit that you know nothing…you have the blueprint for a breakthrough.