Top 80 Steven Rowley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Guncle Rule number eight: Live your life to the fullest every single day, because every day is a gift. That’s why people die. To teach us the importance of living.”

— Steven Rowley

2. “Yours is by far the harder lot, but mine is happening to me.”

— Steven Rowley

3. “I always thought Peter Pan was death. An angel of death who came to collect children.”

— Steven Rowley

4. “Guncle Rule number seven: In this house we wear what we want, it doesn’t matter if it’s for boys or girls. Anything goes, anything you want, so long as it doesn’t have mean words printed on it and it’s not making fun of anyone else. We don’t worry about what others think. Deal?”

— Steven Rowley

5. “Dogs, on the other hand... dogs have pure souls. Look at me.” I grab her chin and look straight into her eyes. “Dogs are always good and full of selfless love. They are undiluted vessels of joy who never, ever deserve anything bad that happens to them. Especially you. Since the day I met you, you have done nothing but make my life better in every possible way. Do you understand?”

— Steven Rowley

6. “It’s nice, the stars. They make me feel unimportant. In a good way. Like my problems don’t matter. They’re not problems. I’m not anything. Just insignificant bits of star dust.”

— Steven Rowley

7. “Guncle Rule number five: If a gay man hands you his phone, look only at what he’s showing you. If it’s a photo, don’t swipe. And for god’s sake, don’t open any unfamiliar apps.”

— Steven Rowley

8. “Because dogs live in the present. Because dogs don’t hold grudges. Because dogs let go of all of their anger daily, hourly, and never let it fester. They absolve and forgive with each passing minute. Every turn of a corner is the opportunity for a clean slate. Every bounce of a ball brings joy and the promise of a fresh chase.”

— Steven Rowley

9. “What do we say in this house? Boys can do girl things and girls can do boy things. That’s not even a Guncle Rule, there shouldn’t even be boy things and girl things to begin with. People should just do what they want.”

— Steven Rowley

10. “Someone once said give a dog food and shelter and treats and they think you are a god, but give a cat the same and they think they are the god.”

— Steven Rowley

11. “She taught me everything I know about patience, kindness, strength, and unconditional love. For that, I am forever in her debt. Lily, you were, quite simply, the greatest to me.”

— Steven Rowley

12. “The very best thing about dogs is how they just know when you need them most, and they’ll drop everything that they’re doing to sit with you awhile. I.”

— Steven Rowley

13. “We’re hyper-connected, but at the same time desperately lonely. We’re overstimulated by bright lights in our face all the time and the promise of more and more content, more and more people to follow, but we’re also numb, scrolling and scrolling past images we don’t even take the time to recognize, or form a cognizant thought about what they’re saying.”

— Steven Rowley

14. “Be present in the moment. Give spontaneous affection.”

— Steven Rowley

15. “Dogs are always good and full of selfless love. They are undiluted vessels of joy who never, ever deserve anything bad that happens to them.”

— Steven Rowley

16. “Grief orbits the heart. Some days the circle is greater. Those are the good days. You have room to move and dance and breathe. Some days the circle is tighter. Those are the hard ones.”

— Steven Rowley

17. “You can’t spell nemesis without me, sis.”

— Steven Rowley

18. “He cursed her silently at the dinner table, angry that she could not understand things that he would never allow her to see. But the whole time, he had a mother to curse, to hate, to forgive. He had a mother to stand there and listen, to take these tirades and to forgive him right back.”

— Steven Rowley

19. “Most of all, I am thankful for Lily, who, since she entered my life, has taught me everything I know about patience and kindness and meeting adversity with quiet dignity and grace. No one makes me laugh harder, or want to hug them tighter. You have truly lived up to the promise of man’s best friend.”

— Steven Rowley

20. “The sun rises with a surprising intensity, a sign that June Gloom has cleared the runway and July is on approach. We are both tired, and it would’ve been to return to our bed after our morning walk, read from a book maybe, drift lazily in and out of sleep. But the sun beckons with a blazingly confrontational message: There is darkness, but there is also light. To stay in bed would be to embrace the darkness, the seizures, the octopus. To go outside is to embrace the light.”

— Steven Rowley

21. “There’s no shame in surrender when it’s time to stop fighting.”

— Steven Rowley

22. “What’s wrong with Tuesdays?” Trent asks. “Everything. Monday’s always Monday, but at least it’s the start of something new. Wednesday is hump day, Thursday’s almost Friday, and Friday brings the weekend. But Tuesday? Nada.”

— Steven Rowley

23. “I don’t know the derivation of this comfort craving, but there’s a quote from Cookie Monster that’s always inhabited my head: ‘Today me will live in the moment, unless it’s unpleasant, in which case me will eat a cookie.’ While I don’t take all of my mantras from goggle-eyed blue monsters with questionable grammar, this one has taken root. Lately I’ve been craving cookies a lot.”

— Steven Rowley

24. “I’m not gay professionally, Cassie. I maintain my amateur status to compete in the Gay Olympics.”

— Steven Rowley

25. “Books should be an experience, he thought, not a trophy for having read them.”

— Steven Rowley

26. “Death is a unique opponent, in that death always wins.” Kal offers a small hiccup of a shrug, as if this is of little significance. “There’s no shame in surrender when it’s time to stop fighting.”

— Steven Rowley

27. “There are two tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want, the other is getting it.”

— Steven Rowley

28. “I love you, he said silently in his head, to himself, to the kids, to Joe, to Sara, to no one. To everyone.”

— Steven Rowley

29. “What they need is some fun. What they need is a change of scenery. What they need is to laugh and be silly and be kids.”

— Steven Rowley

30. “Gay people, Christians always fighting over the symbolism when rainbows rightfully belonged to the leprechauns.”

— Steven Rowley

31. “I wish you total freedom from pain. Freedom from the body that failed you. I hope that you’re full of light, unconstrained, and that you can dance. Because I know how you loved to dance.”

— Steven Rowley

32. “The sky is not going to fall. That’s what I’m telling you. The pain you feel, the disaster you think is imminent. Those feelings fade. And some days you even miss it. Some days you miss the pain, because you’re afraid. Afraid that as the pain softens so do memories of the one you lost.”

— Steven Rowley

33. “People who love each other fight. The opposite of love isn’t anger. It’s indifference. When people stop fighting, that’s when you should be worried.”

— Steven Rowley

34. “Normal is a terrible thing to aspire to,” Patrick had said. “Aim higher.”

— Steven Rowley

35. “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single one, and the life of that candle will not be shortened. That’s what you do for others. You light their candle with yours.”

— Steven Rowley

36. “Grief is a pathological condition. It’s just that so many of us go through it in life that we never think to treat it as such.”

— Steven Rowley

37. “Grief is a pathological condition. It’s just that so many of us go through it in life that we never think to treat it as such. We just expect people to go through it, endure it, and come out the other side.”

— Steven Rowley

38. “So many nights Patrick had looked up at the desert night sky trying to find meaning, trying to locate himself. He would always come back to the same thing: stargazing was time traveling.”

— Steven Rowley

39. “After a pause Lily looks up at me. “Sometimes I think of you as Dad.” My heart rises in my throat. That’s the only term of endearment I need.”

— Steven Rowley

40. “If you spend your entire life trying to cheat death, there’s no time left over to embrace life.”

— Steven Rowley

41. “I don’t remember anything but betrayal. The sharp realization that Lily is the octopus. That she has been deceiving me all along.”

— Steven Rowley

42. “I don’t understand how my life got so empty, or why the octopus came, or why everyone eventually goes away.”

— Steven Rowley

43. “It was the thing Patrick missed most about youth, the assumption that everything would just work itself out. That and his back not hurting.”

— Steven Rowley

44. “I gently lift her up and study her Frankenstein scar. it’s like she’s now assembled from two different dogs: the puppy who will always want to play, and the senior dog who must come to understand her limits.”

— Steven Rowley

45. “I used to be scared of anger, and that’s because I bottled it up inside. Not anymore! It’s like vomiting after drinking too much. Sure, it’s unpleasant in the moment, but then you feel so much better! Anger is beautiful if you express it just right. Let it out.”

— Steven Rowley

46. “How quickly she’d become part of the family by doing nothing else but resting her chin on his thigh while snoozing.”

— Steven Rowley

47. “We’re too often guilty of thinking that our parents arrived on this planet as fully functioning adults on the day that we were born. That they don’t have pasts of their own prior to our birth. That the father is not also a son, that the mother is not also a child. My mother had a tough beginning, enduring things I know little about. And yet I more often discount her pain and overvalue mine.”

— Steven Rowley

48. “Turns out it’s painful to be loved. Intolerable even, at times.”

— Steven Rowley

49. “A heart is judged not by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”

— Steven Rowley

50. “The books were easy to restack, but he pulled a few titles to donate, anyhow. Books should be an experience, he thought, not a trophy for having read them.”

— Steven Rowley