Brandon Stanton Quotes

I really wanted to take her photo, so I walked up to the nearest adult and asked, 'Does she belong to you?' Suddenly the music stopped, and I heard: 'I belong to myself!

Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you're grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.' 'Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation?' 'Because if you can prove you're a victim, all rules are off. You can lash out at people. You don't have to be accountable for anything.

To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

If you love the wrong one so much, just imagine how much you can love the right one.

She had the most beautiful awkwardness

When my husband was dying, I said: Moe, how am I supposed to live without you? He told me: take the love you have for me and spread it around.

The great thing about New York is that if you sit in one place long enough, the whole world comes to you.

I've learned that every feeling will pass if you give it time. And if you learn to deal with your feelings, they'll pass by faster each time. So don't rush to cover them up by medicating them. You've got to deal with them.

I'm having trouble dealing with society." "What aspect of society?" "The whole thing.

I want to change the world but I don't know how.

It seems that a lot of people my age try to be interesting by having problems or starting conflicts. I'd rather be interesting because I created something beautiful.

The sadness is under the thoughts. It's like when you're on a camping trip, and it's really cold, and you put on extra socks and an extra sweater, but you still can't get warm, because the coldness is in your bones.

There are so many people that use 'following your dreams' as an excuse to not work. When in reality, following your dreams, successfully, is nothing but work.

I'm homeless, and I'm an alcoholic. But I have a dream.' 'What's that?' 'I wanna go fishing.

Every time I force myself to go outside something wonderful happens (Humans of New York photographed subject)

HONY is one of the only things keeping people from getting lost in the matrix.

I used to be a butcher. She used to come into my store. Every week I would set apart the best piece of meat for her. And look how it turned out - I ended up with the best piece of meat of them all.

In an age of iPhones and Playstations, it's great to see that somebody's still rocking the bus-on-a-string.

I'm a feminist. So if a woman and I are going for the last empty seat on the subway, I'm not holding back.

Shes's always been very accepting and patient with my trust issues. I've always had a hard time getting close. But no matter how many times I doubted, she just kept saying: 'I'm not going anywhere.

I wish I’d partied a little less. People always say ‘be true to yourself.’ But that’s misleading, because there are two selves. There’s your short term self, and there’s your long term self. And if you’re only true to your short term self, your long term self slowly decays.

Anyone who has a two hundred-plus IQ runs the risk of just hanging out because you get too involved in your own thoughts and you just want to sit there and think about them.

Anyone who has a two hundred-plus IQ runs the risk of just hanging out because you get too involved in your own thoughts and you just want to sit there and think about .

I have a lot of mental illness right now. Half of my energy goes into taking care of myself. I've been daydreaming about shaving my head fully 'cause then I'll look as sick as I feel.

So what I am always looking for is, I'm always looking for something that that person has told me that nobody else has told me. It is normally not an opinion, and it is normally not a philosophy. It's almost always a story. Because we all share similar philosophies, we all share similar opinions on a lot of different issues, but all of our stories are our own.

We're eye doctors." "What's something about the eye that most people don't realize?" "The eye doesn't see. The brain sees. The eye just transmits. So what we see isn't only determined by what comes through the eyes. What we see is affected by our memories, our feelings, and by what we've seen before.

Judging by everyone's excitement, this day will always be remembered at the loading dock as the day 'Larry made it on the internet'.

It might be a cultural thing, but I was always scolded for showing emotion. Sadness was always met with anger.

If you're a thief, don't complain about being robbed.

It takes a lot of disquiet to achieve this sort of quiet comfort

When my husband was dying, I said: ‘Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?’ He told me: ‘Take the love you have for me and spread it around.

That's the problem with growing up in a white world. You think you can do anything that white people can do.

My worldview is this: At all times, people are doing one of two things. They're showing love. Or they're crying out for it.

The more times I fall in love, the less sure I am about love.

I remember taking an anthropology class in college and the professor was explaining that there is little 'sexual dimorphism' in humans. He meant that there are few outward, observable differences between makes and females. At the time I was confused, so I raised my hand. 'I feel like it's very easy to tell men and women apart,' I said. 'That's due to culture,' he answered.

The amplitudes of life get smaller as you age. There are less and less things to experience for the first time. And each time you experience something, you don't get quite as excited. But you don't get quite as hurt, either. I wonder what it will feel like when I'm seventy...

In some neighborhoods, faces mature faster than bodies.

When my husband was dying, I said 'Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?' He told me: 'Take the love you have for me and spread it around.

There are two books in America: one for the poor and one for the rich. The poor person does a crime and gets forty years. A rich person gets a slap on the wrist for the same crime.

Great stories never end with the struggle.

I'm trying to write a book based on myself, but i keep changing.

Lives are made of chapters. And after one is written, it cannot be revisited. But, we can write a new chapter with each new day.

Enjoy your life as long as you want, but the moment the pain becomes too much, it’s in your hands to stop it.

Sometimes it's hard not to fall in love with your friends.

I’ve been married fifty years.  If I was to give one piece of advice to young couples, it’d be this: Never lose your temper at the same time. If somebody’s really mad, the other one better make a retreat.

It's important to always have people who remember you at various stages of your life. It's especially important as you get older, because there are less of those people around. And they remind you who you are.

Underneath all the laughs and the gags, it was always about one thing: survival. Tanqueray was a lot of fun. But Tanqueray was Stephanie. And Stephanie was a teenage runaway from Albany: doing what she needed to do, and being who she needed to be, to get what she needed to get.

If our shields are what separate us, it’s what’s behind them that brings us together: the struggles, the worries, the pain, the weakness. All the soft spots. The places we protect. These are the things that make us most relatable to others. These ads the things that connect us - if only we allow them to be seen.

I turned out okay because of the people in foster care who didn’t go anywhere when I tried to push them away.” “Anyone in particular?” “There were a lot. But there was a counselor at one of my group homes named Jenelle Bugue. And when I woke up crying at 3 A.M. because I felt nobody loved me, she would sit with me and tell me that she cared about me, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

Who’s influenced you the most in your life?” “My principal, Ms. Lopez.” “How has she influenced you?” “When we get in trouble, she doesn’t suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.

My dad died in 9/11. They opened up the museum to families today, so I went this morning. My plan was to go to work after, but I just couldn’t do it.”“What happened to him?”“He was a cop. He actually had the day off. But as soon as he heard, he drove into the city and got there just in time for the second tower to fall. A witness said that my dad had started to run when the tower fell, but turned back because a trapped woman was calling to him.”“What do you remember?”“I was in science class. And my teacher told us that there had been a plane crash. That’s all she said. Then I noticed all these kids around me getting phone calls and text messages, and they’d run out of class. So I knew something big was happening. Soon we got let out of school. On the ride home, I remember thinking that my dad was going to be working overtime on this. I imagined he’d be down there everyday, saving people. ‘I bet I won’t see him for weeks,’ I said.

Right after I lost vision in my eye, I was so bad at walking that I ran into a girl eating ice cream, and knocked her cone out of her hand. She screamed: ‘Are you blind!?!?’ I turned to her and said: 'I am blind actually, I’m so sorry, I’ll buy you a new cone.’ And she said: 'Oh my God! I’m so sorry! Don’t worry! It’s no problem at all! I’ll buy another one.’ So we walked into the ice cream store together, and the clerk said: 'I heard the whole thing. Ice cream is free.

I still dream about him almost every night. And I still sleep with a teddy bear that he gave me. He was the only one why ever knew me. It wasn't always good - especially toward the end. But when I was with him I felt like I had a place. When I came home at night, there was somebody who actually wanted me to be there. And you can't just let go of something like that. Especially when you'd never felt it before. And you've never felt it since. Carmine was the only one who ever loved Stephanie.

She can turn any ordinary moment into an adventure. When Hurricane Sandy destroyed the bottom floor of our house, she decorated the rubble in Christmas lights.

But in a world where stories are selected for their negativity, randomness can easily be mistaken for positivity.

There’s an old cliche that “everyone has a story,” but there’s a reason it’s a cliche. Every person has a story because everyone has a struggle.

These are the battles being fought all around us, just beneath the surface of polite society. Beneath the small talk. Beneath the sports, and the weather, and the politics - there’s a lot of pain.

You can feel when the person is being truthful, no matter what language they’re speaking. Because truth is often spoken haltingly. With pauses. Like it’s being dug up, one spoonful at a time, from somewhere deep. Truth feels heavy. It has gravity.

Stories keep us tuned in. Stories sell newspapers. Stories get clicks. Yes, truth matters. But when it comes to the bottom line, journalism isn’t a truth business. It’s a story business.

Some places are only written about when something extreme happens: like a murder, or an explosion, or a war. Only then do the cameras come running, because conflict makes for a great story. Unfortunately this means that much of the works is only seen through the lens of conflict. And when these are the only stories we hear, the world seems like a pretty scary place.

It’s quite rare to find a person who enjoys being rude. Rudeness is almost always a reaction to stress. It’s a means of protection. It’s a shield.

Sometimes you need to allow life to save you from getting what you want.” Brandon Stanton

You can feel when the person is being truthful, no matter what language they're speaking. Because truth is often spoken haltingly. With pauses. Like it's being dug up, one spoonful at a time, from somewhere deep. Truth feels heavy. It has gravity.

As Brandon Stanton put it, “Sometimes you need to allow life to save you from what you want.

There’s an old cliché that “everyone has a story,” but there’s a reason it’s a cliché. Every person has a story because everyone has a struggle. The heart of a story is the struggle

I'm having a hard time trusting in The Process.' 'What process?' 'The process that says if I do my part, everything will turn out right.

Sometimes, when I'm going home to see her, I think: "Nobody should be this happy on a Tuesday.

She won't talk to me until I get my shit together.' 'Who's she?' 'Every man has a She.

It's important to always have people who remember you at various stages of your life. It's especially important as you get older, because there are less of those people around. And they remind you of who you are.

And I hate to say this because I know it hurts my kids, but I'd rather die with him in addiction than be sober alone.

I didn’t even really like animals. But my daughter said she wanted a pet. So I brought home this kitten, and told my daughter: ‘It’s your responsibility. I’m not going to get involved.’ But now the kitten loves me more than the girl. I call him JJ. He’s always the first one to greet me when I come home. When I leave for work, he lays on my flip-flops by the door. He always wants to be with me. Right now we’re coming back from a trip to the store. My daughter is a little jealous. She’s always trying to steal him from me.” MEDELLíN, COLOMBIA

I cured myself of schizophrenia". "How'd you do that?" "I stopped listening to the voices.

It’s French for ‘army of shadows.’ ” “And what does that mean to you?” “I was going through a really rough time in my life, and it felt  like a whole army was after me. But when I started feeling  better, I realized it was nothing but an army of shadows.

It's quite rare to find a person who enjoys being rude. Rudeness is almost always a reaction to stress. It's a means of protection. It's a shield.

I want to be a mailman so I can let people know when it’s their birthday.” NEW YORK, UNITED STATES

Animals only want to live. It's humans that demand more than they need.

Sometimes you need to allow life to save you from getting what you want.

I want to be a porn star but I think it would embarrass my mom too much.

I went to a psychic the day before I met him. She told me I was about to meet the woman of my dreams. I said: 'I'm gay.

We’ve run marathons together on all seven continents.” “You ran a marathon in Antarctica?” “Ran it? She won it!

They say that you’re supposed to stand up to bullies, but there’s not much you can do when the whole class is like that.” “Why do they make fun of you?” “Let’s see. My weight, obviously. The fact that I read for fun. Mostly sci-fi and fantasy. I watch Nova. I don’t like sports. You know those loud, obnoxious kids you see hanging out in groups, screaming at people? That’s my whole school.” “So what do they do to you?” “Just yell at me and throw stuff at me. But I am proud of one thing. Most kids who get picked on completely spaz out at some point, and get violent. That hasn’t happened to me yet.

I’ve got what I want. I’ve got a place to live, a girlfriend, and a child. My biggest struggle is just figuring out how to maintain.

I’m homosexual and I’m afraid about what my future will be and that people won’t like me.

I was married to a woman when I met him. Why did you marry a woman? Because I thought being gay was a choice. Until the honeymoon.

The moment I saw him, I turned to a friend, and said: “He’s the one.” He was gorgeous. […] Na he was so funny. Not Jim Carrey funny, but a quiet kind of funny. Which is exactly the kind of funny that I wanted. […] We’ve been together for twenty years now. […] Our kids are getting older, and we’re at the point where we have to reconnect. Sometimes we come home from work and don’t say a word to each other. Sometimes we’ll take a road trip and I’ll realize that it’s just been me and the kids talking the entire time. Or if we’re in bed together, we’ll face the other way. He thinks that just being together is enough, and it’s do hard for me to tell him that I’m lonely.

My sister taught me how to ask for money from my parents. First you give them a compliment. Then you talk about your day. Then you tell them about your grades. Then you ask for money.