Top 70 Akemi Dawn Bowman Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

2. “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

3. “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

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

5. “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

6. “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

7. “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

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

9. “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

10. “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

11. “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

12. “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

13. “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

14. “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

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

16. “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

17. “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

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

22. “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

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “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

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

30. “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

31. “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

32. “When I look in the mirror, I see what they see – a girl who doesn’t belong here. A girl who isn’t good enough.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

33. “There’s nobody in the world who would call Lea annoying. Not even me, and I’m usually annoyed by most things with faces.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

35. “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

36. “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

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

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

38. “I draw a very small fish swimming in the ocean and realizing it’s filled with planets and stars.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

39. “Is it possible for someone to be wrong in how they behave but right in how they feel?”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

40. “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

41. “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

42. “I wish I wen’ spend less time being haunted and mo’ time facing my pain, so dat way – me an’ her – we could have been living wit’ his memories instead of hiding from dem.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

43. “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

44. “I want to find self-worth without needing it to come from someone’s approval.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

45. “There’s so much earth everywhere. It’s like all the people migrated to these pockets of lights and noise, and they left all these miles and miles of nature completely untouched.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

46. “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

47. “Sorry. I’m just being weird”. “No. You’re being human...”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

48. “He doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve; he keeps it in a locked box with all of his dreams and expressions because he doesn’t want to share them with the rest of the world.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

49. “I draw a little mouse so afraid of the world that he hides in the dark until he goes blind.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman

50. “I care that everything is changing. Everyone is moving on, and growing up, and I just feel so left behind.”

— Akemi Dawn Bowman