Remembrance Year Quotes

“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, Remembrance Year

“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 and taking out the monuments of all my hollow yesterdays.
We’ll always have the obvious.
It reminds us who, and where we are, it lives like a heart shape,
like a jar that we hand to others and ask, “Can you open this for me?”
We always get the same answer: “Not without breaking it.”
More often than sometimes, I say go for it.”
― Shane Koyczan, Remembrance Year

“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, Remembrance Year

“(...)
I don’t remember the way every song goes.
I can’t recall ever y person I’ve met.
I get names mixed up all the time.
I’m terrible with birthdays.
But I remember all the ways people have affected me.
How our stories became memories.
And if you were enough then you’re in there somewhere.
Maybe it was a truth or dare kiss,
Or a simple act of kindness,
one that reminded me to remember this moment
and mark it as a memory , so we could both have it to look back on.
From this life, I’ve drawn conclusions so big,
They can’t fit into the tiny comic book boxes,
Because I don’t wanna risk losing the detail,
Just so I can make the story fit.
It’s not a trick.
I remember how things felt.
Which in turn makes me remember how things happened.
(...)
I’m pretty fantastic.
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.
(...)”
― Shane Koyczan, Remembrance Year

“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, Remembrance Year

“(...)

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 Koyczan, Remembrance Year

“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, Remembrance Year