Shane Koyczan Quotes

The tiniest dream that you make happen is worth more than the biggest dream that you never attempt.

We don't always get the answers we want, sometimes a simple look can haunt us enough to know some ghosts need their rest.

How can you hold your ground when everyone around you is trying to bury you beneath it?

If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.
[Blueprint for a Breakthrough (2013)]

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

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

And what I said was I'll miss you,
What I meant to say was that I love you,
What I wanted to say was that I meant what I said
I miss you like I miss my own bed
after too many nights of sleeping on couches
or hardwood floors
Or sitting silently behind the doors
Of hotel rooms became wounds
Breathing life in to this loneliness
I miss you
Like a burn victim must miss their own skin
I miss you like a sad ending
Must miss someplace new to begin
Because some say that the highway becomes a flat line
if you travel it for too long
I can't tell if that's true or false,
But I'm racing down it towards you trying to find my
Pulse.

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

I will not stop. I will not slow down. I will not pull over to ask for directions. I will build the road that takes me where I want to be and I will drive, drive, drive. I will drive until the vehicle around me breaks down, falls apart and tumbles into useless debris ... and then I will walk.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by space
And I learnt that time slows near a black hole.
Inside a black hole, time stops altogether.
Whether or not this theory will ever be proved,
I'm moved to believe this would be the perfect place to love someone.

When something's painful, you just avoid it. Why bother dredging up the past if it's nothing but bad stuff?

I guess initially I was amazed that somebody would see something within my work that they could really relate to, but the more it's happened, the more people have come forward, I've really realized that we're all kind of going through the same thing at the same time.

You see, the deaf have an intimacy with silence. It's there in their dreams.

We somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are, to inherit the masquerade of what we will be.

This is my voice. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

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.

Effort is the siamese twin of success

We come from the mentality, that rarely sees the horror in symmetry or the beauty in non-conformity

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

There's 6.5 billion people curled up like fists protesting death, but every breath we take has to be given back; a nine year old boy taught me that.

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.

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

It's not about putting forth the questions, it's about accepting the answers we ask for.

So if anyone ever tells you:
You're not good enough!
You're not smart enough!
Give up your foolish dream!
If anyone ever tells you to quit,
You got to make them wear a diaper on their mouth
Because, man, they're just talking shit.

I remember how my grandmother tried to explain our world to me she told me a story she said the ground and the sky love each other but they don't have arms so rain is how they hold one another.

Having seen TED from a distance, I always thought if ever there was a place for someone like me, the outcasts, people who maintained who they are despite being told what they were, it was TED.

I don't want to turn any of this into poetry / but / you're so beautiful / flowers turn their heads to smell you

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

We wear our lives
Like costumes
Use bills and coins like props
In an over budget production
That we cannot seem to stop
So it just goes on like this
As if we accept this
As if we've all become
Buddhas of mass production
Our brains rotting
Like teeth
Under the sweet
Unending bliss of false enlightenment.

Everything she meant to say was
you've given a worth and happiness to my life
that I had no right to believe could ever exist

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.

Opera is the original marriage of words and music, and there's a theatre element, a dramatic element. It's right up my alley.

She tells me about dreams. She says my dreams are helium and balloons, and I've made the mistake of letting go a few to many times, but I still got this one. Tied around my finger like a wedding ring because even though I don't believe in marriages, I'm gonna bring this one home.

Please, sit in my sky and let me polish your shine.

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

If you think for one second no one knows what you've been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone - that pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you a legion.

When I was a kid, I used to think pork chops and karate chops were the same thing.

I make a good living doing what I do.

It's not magic. I remember because I make comparisons. Not in terms of better or worse, just different. And not all of these memories are great, but they're mine.
Which lends way to believe, that none of our lives are put together on an assembly line. We're not pre-packaged with memories or programmed with stories. We have to make our own.

Scrape the grey sky clean. Realize every grey cloud is a smoke screen to blind us from the truth, and the truth is whether we see them or not the sun and moon are still there, and always there is light.

We're all shipwrecked on this idea that everything has to be explained.

I accept that today may be imperfect ... I accept that I may be as well. What I don't accept is that imperfection should be the crutch I use to excuse myself from participating in joy.

For me, growing up and going to school and not seeing any anti-bullying posters and not hearing people talk about bullying was very desolate.

I hid my heart under my bed because my mother said if you're not careful someday somebody's going to break it. Take it from me, under the bed is not a good hiding spot.

So men and women were born into workers
Because ideas like
Right and wrong
Get outweighed by need
Anytime you've got mouths to feed.

My experiences with violence in schools still echo throughout my life but standing to face the problem has helped me in immeasurable ways,

Bullying, to me, starts very small around the kindergarten age where the first thing we learn is to call each other names. Something so small can be so long lasting in someone's life.

We are graduating members from the class of we made it, not the faded echoes of voices crying out names will never hurt me. Of course they did. But our lives will ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty.

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

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

We used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse

I think everybody gets bullied in their own way. Even athletes probably get it from their parents. To a degree everybody gets bullied.

Don't let your luggage define your travels, each life unravels differently.

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