Quotes About Adversity

I grew up in New York City during the Depression. My earliest recollections were of my parents talking about what they would do if they didn't have the rent money. Luckily, we were never evicted. But my father was unemployed most of the time.

We had all these things to deal with - houses full of people and John going to jail, guys from New York saying 'don't worry about anything.' So it was really confusing.

I did not have any money, so when I came to New York, I just dressed myself with whatever I could find and the Army-Navy store.

As you know, I'm a black girl out of the projects of New York City, raised in a single parent home because my parents divorced very very young... welfare and homeless at four and then again at 16 and just not having the things or the necessary tools that society would say I needed to have in order to be any kind of success in life.

I came to New York with $500 and I had to live on that, but thankfully I was taken up by photographers quickly.

There was no person, whether they thought I was too fat, too black, too country, too ghetto, too New York, too thug or too whatever! Nobody ultimately had the say over whether or not I was going to make it.

When I was 12, my mum put us in a summer camp meant for children from low-income families. It was in upstate New York where we had to live in tents, fetch water, cook our meals, and even dig our own toilet bowls.

You have a character who is wearing a scarf on her head on a billboard in LA, New York, Sydney and Melbourne. That's how I would face barriers being thrown at me.

The funny thing about New York City is that if you hide from her, she's just gonna say, 'Whatever, kid!' and leave you in the dust.

I guess to long story short it, I was really just working day jobs when I moved to New York and trying to pay the bills, working in restaurants and as a receptionist, and at one of those reception jobs, I just got so bored, I started a blog, honing my writing skills a little bit.

Like every New Yorker, I know this place is magic. I know this place is amazing. I know that we have come back time and time again from a great recession, from high crime rates, from 9/11, from crisis after crisis.

Yorkshire is a hard place to ride a bike.

I remember getting hit in the ribs when I was on about eight or nine in my first game, and everyone rushed over, quite concerned. The umpire said to me afterwards, 'If anyone had appealed I would have had to give you out LB!' I ended that innings about nine not out off about 15 overs. I was already digging in - Yorkshire style.

The journey is never ending. There's always gonna be growth, improvement, adversity; you just gotta take it all in and do what's right, continue to grow, continue to live in the moment.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Struggle teaches you a lot of things, and I am happy that I witnessed a roller coaster ride. The journey has improved me as a person and made me more mature.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

You learn more from losing than winning. You learn how to keep going.

If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing.

You can knock me down, but I get up twice as strong.

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.

Life is not what you expect: it is made up of the most unexpected twists and turns.

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.