Remembrance Year Quotes

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. ~ Shane Koyczan

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. ~ Shane Koyczan

I think of the beauty in the obvious,
the way it forces us to admit how it exists,
the way it insists on being pointed out like a bloody nose,
or how every time it snows there is always someone around to say, "It's snowing."
But the obvious isn't showing off, it's only reminding us that time passes,
and that somewhere along the way we grow up.
Not perfect, but up and out.
It teaches us something about time,
that we are all ticking and tocking,
walking the fine line between days and weeks,
as if each second speaks of years,
and each month has years listening to forever but never hearing anything beyond centuries swallowed up by millenniums,
as if time was calculating the sums needed to fill the empty belly of eternity.
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.


My chest is a cannon that I have used to take aim and shoot my heart upon this world.
I love the way an uncurled fist becomes a hand again, because when I take notes,
I need it to underline the important parts of you:
happy, sad, lovely.
Battle cry ballistic like a disaster or a lipstick earthquaking a ~ Shane L. Koyczan

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. ~ Shane Koyczan

(...)

That winter you left me snow-blind trying to find enough details that would let you know that even though some people have perfect sight,
those same people could try to paint you by numbers and they still wouldn't get you right.
You were Monet number two and Van Gogh number 6,
a mix tape of Hendrix and Leibowitz portraits.

It makes no sense to me that we were ever together.
And my makeshift weather reports were the closest I ever came to telling you how I felt.
But you were a lover of the minuscule,
you dealt best with details.
Weighing our relationship on scales you balanced us out, and always made me feel needed.

You always asked me what to wear,
and I would stare at you as if for a second I wouldn't answer.
Of course, I always did.
Hid my affections, and my response:
"wear that smile" I said.
That one you wear when you see me.
That one you wear to bed. ~ Shane L. Koyczan

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. ~ Shane Koyczan

The year that followed - was it the happiest year of his own life? He often thought so, even knowing that such a thing was foolish to claim about any year of one's life: but in his memory, that particular year held the sweetness of a time that contained no thoughts of a beginning and no thoughts of an end.. ~ Elizabeth Strout

We have written a draft of the script in every calendar year since [2010]. Quite honestly. Our Deadpool file is ... full, to capacity. ~ Paul Wernick

What we've established (in San Diego) with my growing family is hard to re-create. It's hard to up and re-create that. I know that moves are part of life. But that certainty is fair to say that (not being sold on moving to Los Angeles) is part of it. The good thing is I'm not under contract in a year where we'd potentially be in Los Angeles. ~ Philip Rivers

Bypass surgery, angioplasty,and even diagnostic angiograms are so over used that, in my opinion, it constitutes criminal behaviour by the cardiologists and surgeons involved. Well controlled scientific studies have shown bypass surgery simply doesn't work, except to relieve severe chest pain. Those who have the surgery didn't even have a trend of longevity benefit compared to those treated without it. Yet, each year hundreds of thousands cave into the obvious fear tactics used by agressive heart doctors and submit to the bypass operation ~ Julian Whitaker

Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one. ~ Brad Paisley

The first time I came back to Watford, my second year, I climbed right into my bed and cried like a baby. I was still crying when Baz came in. "Why are you already weeping?" he snarled. "You're ruining my plans to push you to tears. ~ Rainbow Rowell

And when the war's over, someday, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth doing. ~ Ray Bradbury

There were eruptions against the convict labor system in the South, in which prisoners were leased in slave labor to corporations, used thus to depress the general level of wages and also to break strikes. In the year 1891, miners of the Tennessee Coal Mine Company were asked to sign an "iron-clad contract": pledging no strikes, agreeing to get paid in scrip, and giving up the right to check the weight of the coal they mined (they were paid by the weight). They refused to sign and were evicted from their houses. Convicts were brought in to replace them. ~ Howard Zinn

The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history. ~ Ray Bradbury

Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome ...and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 'tone poet' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible…Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal… ~ William James

She would not have understood, then, that time is not linear but circular. There is no past, present, future. Roya was the woman she was today and the seventeen-year-old girl in the Stationery Shop, always. She and Bahman were one, and she and Walter were united. Kyle was her soul and Marigold would never die. ~ Marjan Kamali

I think the team will think this was an O.K. year. Some guys had career years, but the reality is that we didn't get it done at the end of the day. ~ Mike Young

My dowry is thirty-five. A year."
His brows climbed. "You're joking."
"I would never joke about money with a notorious thief. Just imagine, in a mere two years you're at a profit."
"How I adore a woman who does mathematics in her head."
"I can forge signatures as well."
"Splendid. Exactly the bride I've been hoping for. ~ Shana Abe

Then again, if the plant is slow growing, and you are getting older, you may want to start with a larger plant. I find myself buying larger plants each year. ~ Billy Cannon

You can't be a rational person six days a week and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you are drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god. That doesn't make you a person of faith ... , that makes you a schizophrenic. ~ Bill Maher

Whenever he had spoken of love, she had spoken of love's brief duration. 'A year, or even two months from now, you won't love me anymore.' Josée was the only person he knew who had a real consciousness of time. Everyone else, including himself, was driven by some very fundamental instinct to try, or pretend, to believe that love could last and solitude be dispelled forever. ~ Francoise Sagan

[But the constricted light,
the year closing down on itself with all
the vacancies of January ahead, leave me
unreconciled even to beauty.]
When will you be coming back? ~ Linda Pastan

Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It's really sad. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

If the IMF is correct (a big if), China will be the planet's No.1 economy by 2016. That means whoever's elected in November next year will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world's dominant economic power. ~ Mark Steyn

You think I'm going to ask these sweet 14 year olds to ask their parents to buy a $100 ticket then run around in latex and lip sync? No way. ~ Lady Gaga

A fresh day brings new sunrise and new hope for a fresh start. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

This time last year I would have run to Sam Hamilton to talk."
"Maybe both of us have got a piece of him," said Lee.
Maybe that's what immortality is. ~ John Steinbeck

I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate ... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information. ~ Richard Francis Burton

I've written about illegal immigrants in the United States; I spent a year following migrant farm workers as they were harvesting. I've written about our criminal justice system, and how it treats the victims of crime. I've been working for years now on a book about prisons in America, and I've been going into prisons and traveling around the country and seeing what's going on. ~ Eric Schlosser

I'll live to be one year younger, because I can't stand the idea of a world without you in it, and die buried beneath an avalanche of my own books. ~ Lance Olsen

Still, records are documents of a period of time. Most records are documents of two or three years, and I just approached it as a record I was doing over a 20-year period of time. ~ T Bone Burnett

She pushed the book toward them, and Harry and Ron read: The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Sorcerer's Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The Stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal. There have been many reports of the Sorcerer's Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera lover. Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight). ~ J.K. Rowling

Hi, Commander. On the anniversary of what you did, I just wanted to say thank you. This is my daughter, Dalycia. I don't know if you remember me or not, but I'm the woman you saved from that psycho, and this is the daughter I had six weeks later. Say hi, Dalycia. (Woman)
Hi, Commander. Thank you for saving my mommy and me. I drew this for you to say thank you. See, it's you saving us, and we're all happy 'cause we're alive and the bad man isn't. (Dalycia)
(All of a sudden, he snarled in outrage and threw the frame against the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces.)
Adron! (Livia)
What? Did you think showing me that shit would make all of this okay? Did you think I'd look at them, then cry and say how grateful I am they live while I'm trapped like this? What about the children I wanted to have, Livia? I can't even have sex without spending a month in the hospital, or dying from it. All I want is five fucking seconds where I'm not trying to breathe through absolute agony. Five seconds where I can move and not ache to the marrow of my bones. I'm only thirty-five years old, and all I have to look forward to is a future where I'll slowly, painfully disintegrate into an invalid who can't even wipe his own ass. Do you really think I'm okay with being dependent on you or anyone else? I was an assassin, and now I have less mobility than a withered-up hundred-year-old man. I'm nothing but a worthless piece of shit who should have died that night. And them telli ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Because we don't know, do we? Everyone knows . . . How what happens the way it does? What underlies the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs? Nobody knows, Professor Roux. "Everyone knows" is the invocation of the cliche and the beginning of the banalization of experience, and it's the solemnity and the sense of authority that people have in voicing the cliché that's so insufferable. What we know is that, in an unclichéd way, nobody knows anything. You can't know anything. The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning?

All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

As the audience filed back in, I began, cartoonishly, to envisage the fatal malady that, without anyone's recognizing it, was working away inside us, within each and every one of us: to visualize the blood vessels occluding under the baseball caps, the malignancies growing beneath the permed white hair, the organs misfiring, atrophying, shutting down, the hundreds of billions of murderous cells surreptitiously marching this entire audience toward the improbable disaster ahead. I couldn't stop myself. The stupendous decimation that is death sweeping us all away. Orchestra, audience, conductor, technicians, swallows, wrens - think of the numbers for Tanglewood alone just between now and the year 4000. Then multiply that times every ~ Philip Roth

The yachts' berth was next to the Yas Marina Circuit, where Formula 1 would come into town once a year. At night, when the lights on its orbicular architecture switched on, the circuit would radiate like a constellation of stars ~ Soroosh Shahrivar

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which finally passed in the Senate late last year, is a throwback to the 1990s, when ENDA was first introduced; the bill wasn't updated to the times we live in. It exempts businesses owned by religious groups. ~ Michelangelo Signorile

Tom Brady is a great quarterback, he's a great player, and what you've seen with him is he's gotten better every year. ~ Eli Manning

Departure of a year welcomes so many new memories ~ Munia Khan

Well, The Year Is Finally Wrapped up, Looking Back, I Made Mistakes Along Just like The Next Man, As a Matter of Fact, I Have Wronged, Disappointed, Been Inpatient a Little Insecure, Been Out of Control and at Times Hard to Bare With.
My Prayer Dear Family and Friend is That You Forgive Me and Continue to Bare With Me as I Look Upon Myself and Work on Myself on The Next Coming Years, I Haven't Been The Best of Friends But Sure I Will As I Continue To Seek God's Enlightenment and Wisdom. I Love You All and Bless You In God's Name. ~ William Nsubuga

I was married to a woman until a year ago, I wasn't out for that reason, too." He reminds me he has only recently 'come out'. "It still feels strange to think of myself as a gay man. Told you I'm quite pathetic." Now, I feel like crap for laughing at him. "You're not pathetic, Ali." He smiles again. Gorgeous. "I like you too." The truth is I like Ali a lot. But I am afraid to admit it. The ale is pretty smooth, and I become more relaxed around Ali as we settle into our evening. I have not felt like this with anyone for a long time ~ A. Zukowski

Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jail and prisons, however, they can each generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year. ~ Chris Hedges

everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you are competing against a lot of people. But if you are willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you are now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five ~ Gerardo Giannoni

In 'George Lopez', I played Veronica who's a bratty 18-year-old, and so I feel like it's much easier for me to play that because I feel like a late bloomer. It wasn't difficult or challenging at all because it's not like I haven't been a teenager. ~ Aimee Garcia

Every year the international finance system kills more people than the Second World War. But at least Hitler was mad, you know. ~ Ken Livingstone

During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year. ~ H.L. Mencken

When I was six years old I sprinkled sugar on my head, convinced myself it was pixie dust, wished myself invisible, and walked into the boys' bathroom at school. ~ Janet Evanovich

So that's why I said, if you look at the average, you would see the money New York got this year was in line with the average across the prior three years and substantially more, by a country mile, than the money given to any other city. ~ Michael Chertoff

I always have on my mind the thought that next year I must do something greater, something more wonderful. ~ Harry Houdini

Four years in the White House and two presidential campaigns is an awful long time. In politics, every year in the White House is like dog years, six years off your life. ~ George Stephanopoulos

Birth after birth the line unchanging runs,
And fathers live transmitted in their sons;
Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds,
The same their manners, and the same their minds:Till, as erelong successive buds decay,
And insect-shoals successive pass away,
Increasing wants the pregnant parent vex
With the fond wish to form a softer sex.. ~ Erasmus Darwin