Top 70 Akemi Dawn Bowman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’d rather have an ugly face than an ugly heart.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

2. “You care too much about what other people think. I mean, so what if you fail? So what if it takes a few tries? You’re following your dreams. It shouldn’t matter to anyone else how long it takes you or what your journey is like–it should just matter to you.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

3. “I need to be strong enough to move away on my own, to pull Mom’s hooks out of my heart, to forget about Uncle Max. I need to be strong enough to carry all the guilt of what happened to my family because of me.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

4. “I draw a girl breaking apart the sun until one star becomes a hundred stars, because she wants to cover the world in beauty.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

5. “The mother I’ve always wanted isn’t real; she’s a dream. And not every dream comes true.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

6. “You know, if someone is going to be mad at you just because you didn’t let them have their way, you’re better off without them.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

7. “Don’t live to please the starfish, especially when their happiness is at the expense of yours. That is not love. That is narcissism. There’s an entire ocean out there, Kiko – swim in it.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

8. “But some people are just starfish – they need everyone to fill the roles that they assign. They need the world to sit around them, pointing at them and validating their feelings. But you can’t spend your life trying to make a starfish happy, because no matter what you do, it will never be enough. They will always find a way to make themselves the center of attention, because it’s the only way they know how to live.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

9. “The painting isn’t about the starfish. It’s about the girl who wants to venture out into the ocean, away from the starfish, so she can feel like she matters.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

10. “We all have to dream our own dreams. We only get one life to live – live it for yourself, not anyone else. Because when you’re on your deathbed, you’re going to be wishing you had. When everyone else is on theirs, I guarantee they aren’t going to be thinking about your life.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

11. “But if I could fix myself and turn off the anxiety long enough to feel normal, I would have a long time ago.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

12. “Grief is a monster – not everyone gets out alive, and those who do might only survive in pieces. But it’s a monster that can be conquered, with time.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

13. “There’s an entire ocean out there, Kiko – swim in it!”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

14. “I’ve always felt like I desperately needed to say my feelings out loud – to form the words and get them out of me, because they’ve always felt like dark clouds in my head that contaminate everything around them.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

15. “We fit together not because we need each other, but because we choose each other.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

16. “My sister died and my parents abandoned me. I kind of stopped caring about tomorrow.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

17. “I live my life in the small space between “uncomfortable and “awkward.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

18. “Sometimes I feel like that too – like a balloon with too much air, or a spring with too much tension. I need to pop – to release everything I’m feeling – which usually just sends me in the opposite direction until the same thing happens again.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

19. “I snort and pull my hair up into a high bun. It takes three tries to get it right because apparently my hair is as stubborn as I am.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

20. “We all have to dream our own dreams. We only get one life to live – live it for yourself, not anyone else.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

21. “And I decide, right there and then, that I don’t care if I’m not someone’s idea of pretty. I don’t care if my name might disappoint someone, or if my face might disappoint someone’s parents. Because that says so much more about them than it does about me.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

22. “It’s good to stay motivated, but if you’re putting so much pressure on yourself that you’re making yourself unhappy, that’s not good. Try not to be so hard on yourself, okay? Set a pace you’re comfortable with. Enjoy the journey.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

23. “Normal people don’t need to prepare for social interactions. Normal people don’t panic at the sight of strangers. Normal people don’t want to cry because the plan they’ve processed in their head is suddenly not the plan that’s going to happen.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

24. “I love you, Jamie, but I don’t want to love you this way. I’m broken in too many places and I can’t let you be the one to put me back together. If I’m going to survive in this world, I need to learn how to take care of myself first. I need to heal, so that my heart can be whole again. I need time. A lot of time.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

25. “People fall down. You can either laugh or cry. Laughing makes it easier fo’ get back up, though.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

26. “Because that’s how it is when you have a sister you love – you never stop talking to them, not ever, not even when they do something horrible, or stop breathing, or exist in some place you can’t see. Because their ghost stays with you forever, and you spend the rest of your life trying to say all the things you wish you had said when they were alive.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

27. “And if you do this, you need to be strong enough to carry the scars. Because we may know the wound, but we can’t predict how far a scar will go.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

28. “I draw a girl without a face, drawing somebody else’s face onto her own reflection.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

29. “If you don’t know where to look for her, you might not see her at all.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

30. “And if society cared more about rehabilitation than throwing stones, maybe we’d create an environment that encouraged people to be kinder.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

31. “There has to be honor in success, otherwise it isn’t earned – it’s taken.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

32. “When I look over my shoulder, I see Jamie watching me with the same adoring smile time he has from the first time I met him. Jamie is not a starfish. Not even close.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

33. “Beauty isn’t a single thing. Beauty is dreaming–it’s different for everyone, and there are so many versions of it that you mostly have no control over how you see it.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

34. “I don’t know what I can do; I don’t know what I’m capable of accomplishing all on my own. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to start a new life away from what are equal parts toxic and familiar.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

35. “One day you goin’ wake up and find your anger has been replaced wit’ loneliness, and i’s mo’ easy fo’ stop being mad dan it is fo’ stop being lonely.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

36. “Losing Lea feels like there’s a knife forever twisting in my heart. It feels like walking up a stairway that never ends, and every new step gets harder and harder to climb. It feels like floating through space with no way of getting home. It feels hopeless.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

37. “All my life I’ve felt lonely, and it has always left an ache inside me, like there’s a supernatural presence crushing my heart within its fist.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

38. “She’s a shell. A ghost. I think her soul climbed into the coffin with Lea. I wish mine had done the same. Because at least then I wouldn’t feel so left behind.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

39. “He says it’s not good to complain about the things we can’t change.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

40. “It’s like he’s sterilized himself clean with every variation of mint known to man.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

41. “Because music is a carnival at night, lit up by a thousand stars and bursting with luminescent colors and magical illusions. Music is magic and lightning and fireworks.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

42. “Hearts aren’t meant to be broken an infinite amount of times.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

43. “I’m too busy crying myself, thinking of how it must feel to be loved so wholly, so unconditionally.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

44. “All you’ve done is take away their free will. Their ability to be better. Because that’s the thing about humans, they grow, and they change, and they learn from their mistakes.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

45. “We all start at the same place, but you’re completely in charge of where you finish.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

46. “But emotions aren’t black-and-white – you don’t have to be either happy or sad. There can be an in-between, you know.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

47. “You can’t rush creativity. It’s like the rain. You wait and wait and wait, and when it finally comes, it soaks the earth and revives all the plants.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

48. “If we’re kind to a hundred people and cruel to one, can we really be considered kind? I’m not so sure. I don’t think kindness is supposed to have limitations.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

49. “If I can’t figure out how to live on my own–how to do things on my own–how am I supposed to live at all?”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

50. “I love the circus. I love the mystery, and the wonder, and the way every act transports my soul into another dimension. I love the way it makes me feel as if the world is in reverse and upside down all at once – like there’s starlight beneath my feet and the ocean above my head, and every impossible dream can come true with a single whisper.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman