Shannon Lee Quotes

Simply put: time is fluid. The faster your world spins out of control, the slower timer crawls. The more time you need, the less you're sure to get. It's all relative

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine….

It doesn't take much hope to infect a person. Hope is worse than vampire venom. It takes hold and changes a person. Fast.

Scientifically, I know beginnings don't exist. The world is made of energy, which is neither created or destroyed. Everything she is was here before me. Everything she was will remain. Her existence touches both my past and my future at one point- infinity. Lifelines aren't lines at all. They are more like circles. Its safe to start anywhere and the story will curve its way back to the starting point. Eventually. In other words, it doesn't matter where I begin. It doesn't change the end.

Please don't confuse love and logic ... They aren't even remotely related.

I'll either find a way or make one.

Life is not a competition; it's a cocreation.

Sometimes life is like that, you know. It smacks us when we’re down. The brave get back up. At least, they do in the books.

I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.

How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?” —Albert Einstein

No matter what, you must let your inner light guide you out of the darkness.

If you can’t feel the dream in your heart and see it in your mind’s eye, then it may not be your dream. It may be someone else’s. Your dream should excite and entice you. It should make all the hard work and potential struggle you are going to have to put into it worth it, because it is all yours.

People have to go through skillful frustrations, otherwise they have no incentive to develop their own means and ways of coping with the world. - Bruce Lee

Patience is not passive. On the contrary, patience is concentrated strength.

Perception is a powerful tool.

Fill your life with what you love. That's my hope for you.

Do you know how I like to think of myself? As a human being. Because under the sky, under the heavens, there is but one family.

In the olden days, people thought time was a constant. It could not be slowed or sped up. Time was time, and no man could move it. Then Einstein said, Bullshit.

The goal isn’t not to fail; the goal is to fail faster so that the lessons from the failures can be implemented and lead you to success more quickly.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.

Every sorrow is different, but you get through 'em the same way. Plenty of rest, good food, and keeping your family and friends close by." She paused a minute. "A lot of prayer doesn't hurt either.

I am on a path of understanding more and more about myself every day and shifting my perspective just like my father did. I’m becoming more conscious about what I’m ignoring or denying, and my learning process has become faster, my struggles fewer and less intense.

So I can see you. And just like you, I can see Thestrals,too.

The thought of kissing Charlotte again makes me feel like I’m being sucked away into the vacuum of space. Which, if you’re wondering, is painful and scary and leaves me almost breathless.

One key indicator that the ego is in the driver’s seat rather than your soul is the word “should.” If your decisions come from a place of “should” much of the time, then you’re not necessarily being guided by your true, essential self. You may be giving up your authority to whomever the arbiters of “should” are—your parents, your partner, your teacher, your religion, society, etc.

Do not be tense, but ready; not thinking, but not dreaming; not being set, but flexible. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware, and alert; ready for whatever may come.…

And that is what it's like to be loved by you. I am exceptional, even when I'm awful. I am happy even when I'm sad.

Knowing is not enough,” he said. “We must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.

try to meet each conversation, each interaction, and each experience with a willingness to consider something new without the burden of your judgment in the process.

I'm kind of in love with the idea that kindred spirits stay connected no matter the distance between them.

Sleep is overrated." The book lover trumped the sensible mom in Shannon. "Reading is everything.

What are we supposed to do now?" "Be brave," she whispers

But goals are still incredibly useful as long as we don’t forget to be present and fluid with them. My father would, in fact, encourage you to set goals and to make at least one definite move daily toward them. He would suggest that to strive actively to achieve some goal will, in fact, give your life meaning and substance. But he would also caution that a goal is not always meant to be reached. Rather it simply serves as something to lean into, a future to live toward. The point, really, is in the doing and not in the outcomes. The maximizing of one’s potential is not the tallying of accomplishments, but the continual engagement in life as a process of unlimited growth.

When you have mastery in combat, you not only meet a fight with composure and skill, you become an artist of movement, expressing yourself powerfully in the immediate, unfolding present with absolute freedom and certainty.

And sometimes while I'm there I'll sit down with your idea of me. She looks like me but prettier, her features more defined. Kinder and more soft and always forgivable. She is me but in my best light, the way you always see me.

The funniest and nicest one in any room. Maybe more cartoon than human. The sort of person you lie awake imagining when you were younger, the kind of character I'd write into my life if I had any control over that sort of thing.

Lifelines aren’t lines at all. They’re more like circles. It’s safe to start anywhere and the story will curve its way back to the starting point. Eventually. In other words, it doesn’t matter where I begin. It doesn’t change the end.

In his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle says, “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.

Charlotte told me that afternoon. It sucked, but we weren’t as close then, so it didn’t suck as much. I didn’t know then, you know?” “Know what?” “What it meant to have a friend—that having a friend would change me, make me a better person—make me more real. How was I to know?

You feel like a book I read a long time ago- learning you is like remembering something I'd seen written. Your thoughts spill onto me like a dog eared page or an underlined paragraph. Familiar but slightly surprising all the time. You open your arms to me and I think, I have been here before. This is safe.

Water may flow swiftly or it may flow slowly, but its purpose is inexorable, its destiny sure.

It was the middle of summer and the start of my twenties and I wanted so badly to do something I could be proud of.

Sometimes I like to spend some time in your mind. Everyone has super powers there, and it's always Saturday, and no problem can't be solved without a little hope.

what he needed to do was feel his feelings and think his thoughts, and then allow them to pass through like a reflection rather than get hung up on them.

You're stronger than you think. If you want to fall in love, then fall.

It's not enough to be your best. You need to be someone else's best, too.

It's mathematically impossible to reach infinity. Every step toward it gets us no closer. In the end, all we've done is move farther from where we bagan.

You are the creator and the interpreter of your life in every moment.

To grow, to discover, we need involvement,

It is not to be without emotion or feeling but to be one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked.

My father considered himself fully weaponized, not only because he was a skilled fighter and in peak shape, but because he knew how to harness his will.

People have to grow through skillful frustrations, otherwise they have no incentive to develop their own means and ways of coping with the world.

Above all, don’t start from a conclusion.

In other words, it doesn’t matter where I begin. It doesn’t change the end.

Sometimes fate tore loved ones apart. Sometimes it turned rivals into brothers.

In the olden days, people thought time was a constant. It could not be slowed or sped up. Time was time, and no man could move it. Then Einstein said, Bullshit. Okay, he didn’t say that. What he said was E = mc2. Simply put: time is fluid. The faster your world spins out of control, the slower time crawls. The more time you need, the less you’re sure to get. It’s all relative.

Lo que yo sé es menos importante que lo que ve el mundo -dijo Kit_. Permíteme que te haga una pequeña alegoría. El arte. El arte no es un gran acto creativo, sino un conjunto de muchos actos menores. Si lees uno de mis poemas, no ves las emanas de minucioso trabajo que me ha costado componerlo, lo que he pensado, las palabras que he tachado, las páginas que he quemado de rabia. Lo único que ves, al final, es lo que yo quiero que veas. La política es igual.

Lo que yo sé es menos importante que lo que ve el mundo -dijo Kit-. Permíteme que te haga una pequeña alegoría. El arte. El arte no es un gran acto creativo, sino un conjunto de muchos actos menores. Si lees uno de mis poemas, no ves las semanas de minucioso trabajo que me ha costado componerlo, lo que he pensado, las palabras que he tachado, las páginas que he quemado de rabia. Lo único que ves, al final, es lo que yo quiero que veas. La política es igual.

Holding no hand is hard, but holding the wrong one is harder. My body, quite literally, has rejected him. He plants tumors in my mind and in my child-making bits. If I cannot trust him with my cervix, I cannot trust him with my heart.

It is not to be without emotion or feeling but to be one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked.” It is not to deny or bury or go around your feelings or your thoughts about those feelings. It is to feel them, acknowledge them, and work with them—to understand what they are trying to tell you about you, about the situation—to let them show you where there is more work to be done without letting them overwhelm, unbalance, or trap you. They have information for you. Take the information, say thank you, and keep going.

And we laugh and it's easy and sometimes it's too easy and something outside of us comes along to make it hard. And then, even then, with us sitting sad and broken it is easy. It is easy to go through something hard with you. I think that could be the beginnings of something like love.

I discover myself the more I'm with you. And I think I fell in love with me, too. You lit the path and I simply followed. You took my hand and led me through a gallery: Things That Are Amazing About Me. I learned myself the way I would a stranger. You showed me things I had always possessed but overlooked.

Fear,” my father explained, “compels us to cling to traditions and gurus. There can be no initiative if one has fear.” He goes on to say that “the enemy of development is pain phobia—the unwillingness to do a tiny bit of suffering. As you feel unpleasant, you interrupt the continuum of awareness and you become phobic.

My dear friend and colleague Chris gave me the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, translated by Charles S. Terry. It’s about real life seventeenth-century samurai Miyamoto Musashi, who wrote The Book of Five Rings (which my father had in his library), and I came across a passage in the novel that I think captures the living void beautifully:

So take a moment to consider with me the possibility of holding relationship to others in this way: Picture a full, bright moon shining down on a pool of still water. On one side is the water and on the other is the moon. As they hold and reflect each other, notice that each makes the other even more resplendent. As the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water.

Scientifically, I know beginnings don’t exist. The world is made of energy, which is neither created nor destroyed. Everything she is was here before me. Everything she was will remain. Her existence touches both my past and my future at one point—infinity. Lifelines aren’t lines at all. They’re more like circles. It’s safe to start anywhere and the story will curve its way back to the starting point. Eventually. In other words, it doesn’t matter where I begin. It doesn’t change the end.

At one point he said "Some may not believe it, but I spent hours perfecting whatever I did." He worked not only on sculpting the body but at shaping his mind, educating himself, evolving his practices, developing his potential. He also worked at the little things, like having beautiful handwriting, writing and speaking grammatically well, developing a colloquial understanding of English through joke-telling, learning how to direct a film - the list goes on and on. And as a result, he created a legacy that continues to be relevant forty-seven years after his death.

For instance, when it came to developing his art of jeet kune do, he delved not just into standard martial arts for inspiration and information; he looked at Western boxing, fencing, biomechanics, and philosophy. He admired the simplicity of boxing, incorporating its ideas into his footwork and his upper-body tools (jab, cross, hook, bob, weave, etc.). And from fencing, he began by looking at the footwork, range, and timing of the stop hit and the riposte, both techniques that meet attacks and defenses with preemptive moves. From biomechanics, he studied movement as a whole,

beyond them. The Six Diseases If we want to look at how we practice all forms of rivalry, there are six diseases my father wrote about, all of which stem from the desire we have to win at all costs. These diseases rely on being in competition, which is typically where we go in a relationship the moment any discord pops up. When we relate to others in these ways, we are disconnecting from them and disconnecting from our true selves in order to access some form of outside validation. In other words, there is no relationship, no collaboration, no cocreation. There is only the victor and the loser. The Six Diseases are: The desire for victory I have to be the winner. If I don’t win, I’m a loser. If I win, everyone else is a loser. The desire to resort to technical cunning I rely on the power of my wits to show you how great I am. Who cares about people or their feelings as long as everyone can see how clever I am? The desire to display all that has been learned Check me out. I know lots of things. I can speak at length about anything. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say (especially if it’s dumb). The desire to awe the enemy I am a force to be reckoned with. Look out! I will wow you to get your approval even if I have to do something shocking and wild to get your attention. The desire to play the passive role I am so easy to get along with. Who wouldn’t like me? I am so unobtrusive and sweet. I will put anything that’s important to me aside to make sure that you see how likeable and wonderful I am. How could you not like me when I sacrifice everything just for you? The desire to rid oneself of whatever disease one is affected by I am not okay as I am. I will perform constant self-work and read as many books as I can and take so many classes to make myself good that you will see that I am always trying to be a good person even if I continue to do lots of shitty things. I know I’m not okay as I am. And I know you know that I know I’m not okay as I am, which makes it okay not to get truly better as long as it looks like I’m trying.

The Chinese conceived the entire universe as activated by two principles, the Yang and the Yin, the positive and the negative. And they considered that nothing that exists, either animate or so-called inanimate, does so except by the ceaseless interplay of these two forces. Yang and Yin, Matter and Energy, Heaven and Earth are conceived of as essentially One, or as two coexistent poles of one indivisible whole. It is a philosophy of the essential unity of the universe and eternal cycles, of the leveling of all differences, the relativity of standards, and the return of all to the divine intelligence, the source of all things.

It feels almost too normal, too right. I remember what you said the night we both got overwhelmed; "It's scary, but I think this is everything or almost everything. There's no twist ending.

There are things, little girl, that you cannot dream up.

You tell me you miss me when I'm ten minutes from home. And you tell me I'm beautiful when I feel beautiful and all the times I don't. You text it to me when you haven't even seen my face that morning; like you know it as a fact and not an observation.

It never gets easier to go in the opposite direction of you.

Sometimes it feels too good to be true. It feels like we're making all this up.

You believe Lee, don't you? That the other side exists?"  Her voice rattled, each word interspersed with a brief gasp of breath. I wanted her to stop talking, to save her breath, but it scared me, the way she asked me. What did she want me to say? I couldn't lie to her on her deathbed, for Christ's sake. Her eyes were clear, boring into me; she'd see right through me, always could.

Sleep is overrated.” The book lover trumped the sensible mom in Shannon. “Reading is everything.

experimenter. For instance, when it came to developing his art of jeet kune do, he delved not just into standard martial arts for inspiration and information; he looked at Western boxing, fencing, biomechanics, and philosophy. He admired the simplicity of boxing, incorporating its ideas into his footwork and his upper-body tools (jab, cross, hook, bob, weave, etc.). And from fencing, he began by looking at the footwork, range, and timing of the stop hit and the riposte, both techniques that meet attacks and defenses with preemptive moves. From biomechanics, he studied movement as a whole,

experimenter. For instance, when it came to developing his art of jeet kune do, he delved not just into standard martial arts for inspiration and information; he looked at Western boxing, fencing, biomechanics, and philosophy. He admired the simplicity of boxing, incorporating its ideas into his footwork and his upper-body tools (jab, cross, hook, bob, weave, etc.). And from fencing, he began by looking at the footwork, range, and timing of the stop hit and the riposte, both techniques that meet attacks and defenses with preemptive moves. From biomechanics, he studied movement as a whole, seeking to understand the physical laws of motion while understanding biological efficiencies and strengths. And within philosophy, he read widely from both Eastern and Western writers, such as Lao Tzu, Alan Watts, and Krishnamurti, while also picking up popular self-help books of the day. He was open to all inspiration and all possibilities—his only limit being the limit of his own imagination and understanding.

while understanding biological efficiencies and strengths. And within philosophy, he read widely from both Eastern and Western writers, such as Lao Tzu, Alan Watts, and Krishnamurti, while also picking up popular self-help books of the day. He was open to all inspiration and all possibilities—his only limit being the limit of his own imagination and understanding.

Another way to say this is: Don’t give up your sovereignty or personal power. Claim your own path and your own experience. Be respectful and grateful for the signposts you encounter, the lessons you learn, and the teachers who point the way, but remember that you and you alone are responsible for your path and your growth.

For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes maybe a lifetime. To take responsibility of one’s actions, good and bad, is something else. After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge. Self

I have come to recognize that these feelings—of what his essential nature is—are my memories of him. I know him in a way that’s unclouded by any conflicts or hurts, jealousies or competition, or even any overly romanticized notions. I know his love, his energy signature. I know it because in our formative years, that is how we know our parents—through what we take in through our senses.

The opponent in this case is the obstacle. When we hit a big roadblock, it’s easy not only to get stuck but to lose hope. My father said, “It is not what happens that is success or failure, but what it does to the heart of man.” What does it do to your heart? Will you let it defeat you? Or will you learn to use it to step into something new? Something unexpected? Perhaps even something better? When it comes to a new obstacle, start off by just sitting with it. Be with it. Cozy up to it. Learn from it. What has it got to show you? To teach you? How will you have to change to move beyond it? What new skill will you have to learn? What old wound might you need to heal? When you get in the ring and you keep getting punched in the face, do you learn how to duck and cover and eventually learn how to hit back? Or do you just stand there and keep letting yourself get punched in the face until you go down and never get back up?

You have a choice in how you respond to anything that happens in your life. You may think that you don’t, but you always do. Remember, first and foremost, that a response is also an inward state of being. You may be conditioned to respond in a particular way, and that conditioning may seem ironclad, natural, and unquestionable to you, but it’s always just one option no matter how ingrained. No matter what happens to you, you hold the power to determine what comes next. You are in charge of your reaction, and in this way, you are all powerful. Remember, my friend, it’s not what happens that counts; it is how you react. Your mental attitude determines what you make of it, either a stepping stone or a stumbling block. Walk

When you stop resisting life—even the hard parts of life—then you start to be a part of life, and life takes you under its wing and says to you, “Look. This is how we live.” And after a time, you realize you are ready to stop swirling around and around in that little eddy at the riverbank because you know yourself to be the stream, and it becomes safe to let yourself flow forth again.

Water is present to its circumstances and surroundings and therefore ready to move in any direction that allows it passage. That openness and pliability means it is in a constant state of readiness, but a natural readiness because it is simply being wholly itself. To be like water, then, is to realize your most whole, natural, and actualized self where you are living as much as possible in the slipstream of life as you forge your own path forward.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.… If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Don’t separate yourself from the experience in order to analyze it. Don’t isolate yourself from what just transpired. Don’t disappear.

One interesting thing about my father’s writings are that there are no negative tirades. That’s not to say my father never wrote about anything that was bothering him, but he wrote about it in a way that came with a key realization for himself of what his preferences were—he wrote through it. And he landed on what he would like himself or his life to be like instead of what was happening that was “wrong.

I am means.” I am the process. I am the life that will one day come to its end. My life is happening right now and there’s no “someday” or “if then” or “but when.” I am the method of my life. I am the creator of my life. I am the tool for my living. My body, my mind, my spirit are all at my disposal toward whatever I want to do, to believe, and to expand upon. So live your life like this is your life to live. Because it is.

father was very certain that meditation should not be about “striving” to be still and calm. “Striving” is the antithesis of being empty.

It is not a shame to be knocked down by other people. The important thing is to ask when being knocked down, “Why am I being knocked down?” If a person can reflect in this way, then there is hope for that person.

If there’s no right and wrong or judgment over this and that, then there’s no need to beat yourself up because there’s no win or lose. When you notice you didn’t do what you wanted to do, then just give yourself a little pep talk and start again as if the past is, well, past. Every moment is a new moment to pick it back up and start again. Remember that practice doesn’t make us perfect; it makes us better. So stop attaching yourself to the results and just stay committed to the path. And when you stumble, pick yourself up and begin again.

Keep your mind on the things you want, and off those you don’t.

You have this way of looking at me that stops my heart; it is the way, I think, I’ve always dreamed of being looked at.

defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.

And it was you and me with our foreheads pressed together as we fell asleep; you and me and the tangle of our hands; you and me and the way my breath hitched in my throat just a little when I realized I had never liked anyone so much, ever.

best place to start is with how something makes you feel—energized or flat? Engaged or bored? This allows us to assess everything we experience with discernment and figure out what speaks to who we are. In this way, we are attempting to attain (or to remember) our nature. Recall that water stagnates and evaporates when it is not given what it needs to be itself—movement and connection to its source. In order for us to research our own experience, we need to be learning from what’s around us—we need to be in full flowing connection to assess and pursue the energy that makes us feel most alive and good and essentially ourselves.

The complexity of life means that every single moment and situation and challenge is new, maybe only slightly so, but still worthy of your presence and pliability nonetheless.