Quotes About Adversity

I was born in April of 1966, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Soon after, my parents and grandparents all lost personal freedom simply for being intellectuals. So I spent most of my childhood rotating between adopted families of peasants and coalminers.

I spent my girlhood as a Clydesdale among thoroughbreds.

The first 20 years had such a profound effect on me, I spent the next 20 dealing with them.

I spent a lot of years trying to beat the system and, in the end, the system kicked my behind good.

I spent my 20s making film after film, often in very adverse conditions. You'd fly back from somewhere - Beirut, the Falklands, South Africa - on Saturday, and you'd have 24 hours to cut your film, and it would go out on Monday night.

Each generation needs a 'Spider-Man' to mirror their angst.

I'm scared of failure so much more than any of the other girls I compete against that I work so much harder than they possibly could. I'm totally down with spiders and frogs and heights and snakes - everything; I'm cool with it.

Braveness, for me, is running into my basement with no socks on. There are huge spiders down there!

I think I'm always interested in the people who aren't generals or master spies or royalty. The people caught in the crossfire.

You have to be prepared to take a spill.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was devastating to Louisiana's economy, environment, and way of life, but because of the resiliency of our people, we were determined to come back stronger than ever.

Never cry over spilt milk, because it may have been poisoned.

I think crying over spilt milk and being all moody and sulky is really bratty behavior. You shouldn't do it, because it's going to drag you and everyone else around you down.

Being nice can be funny. A lot of my jokes are like, 'Let me take a bad situation and try to put the best spin on it.'

If I can take something terrible and try and put a positive spin on it, or, or, you know, inspire somebody else that might be going through the same thing, that's a good thing.

It's been a reality check that my muscles are still really affected by my spinal cord injury, but it's also been super empowering to see how much I'm capable of.

With a spinal cord injury, which most people don't really know about... there are many, many complications that actually lead you through your life, and sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down.

I was born with Spina bifida. That's where you have a hole in your spine, and your nerve endings come out.

I had four compression fractures in my spine. They were repaired, but it cost me two inches of height.

Before MS moved in on me, I'd worked for seven years as a city lawyer, as the editor of a literary magazine, and before the age of 20, I'd also worked as a cadet journalist and as an assistant director in both film and TV. And then, after the lesions of MS, both on my spine and in my brain, I was the opposite of bionic.

I broke five vertebrae, and they had to rod my spine because I broke my sternum, too.

Persevering and getting through hardship makes you tough, and at our house we celebrate stitches. As long as we didn't do permanent damage to their spine that's going to have lasting effect, we applaud and celebrate stitches at our house.

I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend my time now like a spider spinning my own entrails.

I finished Edson Barboza in a d'arce choke. What else do you want? He's very hard to take down. Spinning heel kicks, spinning kicks. I took some of his most powerful shots and I just kept coming forward. I'm the Boogeyman out there.