Quotes About Adversity

Being out of work brought a lot of new and starkly instructive experiences.

the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.

Must I be humbled in order to be lifted up, made low in order to be raised high?

I been wading in the water. I been walking all over the River Jordan. But what it get me, huh? I done been baptized with blood of the lamb and the fire of the Holy Ghost. But what I got, huh? My enemies all around me picking the flesh from my bones. I'm chocking on my own blood and all you got to give me is salvation?

I seen a man grab hold to a fellow and cut off his arm. Cut it off at the shoulder. He had to work at it a while...but he cut it clean off. The man looked down saw his arm gone and started crying. After that he more dangerous with that one arm than the other man is with two. He got less to lose. There's a lot of one-arm men walking around.

This is how you survive the unsurvivable, this is how you lose that which you cannot bear to lose, this is how you reinvent yourself, overcome your abusers, fulfill your ambitions and meet the love of your life: by following what is true, no matter where it leads you.

Even when we lose an arm or a leg, there's not less of us but more. Human experience weighs more than human tissue.

And I hope she does not live in a dark world. Because even the most terrible loss doesn't have to make you darker; it can make you deeper.

The most valuable moments and experiences that life has to offer are found only along its most treacherous paths.

In the same way that a tornado rips the roof off a double-wide trailer, leaving the occupants dazed and staring at the clouds from the splinters of what used to be their living room, it was over.

But then, look at me. My brain is incorrectly formed, and I'm shaped like a tube. Plus, I'm an alcoholic, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, was raised in a cult and have no education. So, really, if you think about it, the only thing that separates me from the guy with the stinky foot and no teeth is a book deal and some cologne.

I once read about a guy who lost his arms in a fire. The nurse took pity on him and gave him a hand job. I don't even get that.

Nothing surprises me now, I tell him. I am stoic. I am Joan of Arc, with liver damage and an unused penis.

I'm a sunflower with a cracked petal.

This is the truest thing I know. Scars are nothing to hate, they are nothing to deny. They serve as our proof of what we survived, and there is nothing more beautiful than to have survived something.

Because all of us are made not only of what we have but of what we lost. And loss is not a subtraction. As an experience, it is an addition. Even when we lose a leg or an arm, there's not less of us but more. Human experience weighs more than human tissue.

The truth behind the truth is this: even if you are a victim, you must never be a victim. Even if you deserve to be one. Because while you wait for somebody to come along and set things right, life has moved forward without you.

We tried to everything right, now we were forced to do everything wrong and it was working.

One minute we were sitting at the lowly kitchen table moaning about the sorry state of our lives and the next we were liberating the architecture with heavy projectiles. This was pure, freedom. Better than sniffing glue.

Loss creates a greater overall surface area within a person. You expand as a result of it. Though it may very well feel like the opposite.

If you spend twenty years trying to get something and you still don't have it, is it admirable to keep trying? Or did you pass admirable several miles back and it's getting close to straitjacket time? If you are no closer to having something you've been chasing for twenty years, your data is broken. Either you can't get it, period; you already have it; you don't really need or want it; or it's not real.

No matter how awful something is, you can always sell tickets.

We tried to do everything right, now we were forced to do everything wrong and it was working.

even if you are a victim, you must never be a victim. Even if you deserve to be one. Because while you wait for somebody to come along and set things right, life has moved forward without you.