Brandon Stanton Quotes

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

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

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

New York is a giant place and no matter how big you get, there's still going to be a ton of people who haven't heard of you.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

In some neighborhoods, faces mature faster than bodies.

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.

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.