Quotes About Adversity

I was raised never to carp about things and never to moan, because in vaudeville, which is my background, you just got on with it through all kinds of adversities.

My dad had always bought and sold gold and other stuff. In '81, he went broke because of real estate, so he moved us to Vegas and opened a small second-hand store. We always wanted a pawn license because there's a lot more money in that.

Other bands in Vegas hated us because we hadn't played shows and paid our dues. Publications called us out, saying we were just a put-together band, claiming we had ghostwriters. It made me so happy, the fact that everyone was hating on us so hard.

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it.

I just became a vegetable for three months. I couldn't talk to people. I was very ill and that was part of the reason I left college.

I live in a joint family with 17 members under one roof. My father is an MA, but he didn't get a job, because all his certificates got destroyed when our house caught fire. So my father took up farming - fish farming and vegetable farming.

You know, some people think since I can't move I am a vegetable. Wrong. Just picture yourself as you are, just always sitting down and if you need something a hot babe takes care of you. I am exaggerating a little, but this is how I see it.

I worry about Zimbabweans. They bend, they bend, they bend, they bend - where do the people break? How long can they go on scrounging for food in garbage dumps and using the moisture from sewage drains to plant vegetables?

Whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Gorgon or a vehicle for soaring to the heights of transformation and mastery depends upon how we approach it.

We can't start over and develop a Saturn 5-type vehicle from scratch.

I had a motorcycle accident, and I had my garage burn down with most of my vehicles. And I've had really bad relationships that I've been in and out of. They've left their mark.

I have all kinds of chest injuries; I tore my vein during 'Rocky II' and had 60 stitches. If you've seen 'Rocky Balboa,' you'll know how bad they look.

She was a lioness. She was described as an iron fist in a velvet glove. She needed that culture and background to survive in the world of Hollywood where you have to fight for everything.

My parents sent me from Venezuela to the Convent of Our Lady, a boarding school in Hastings, which was horrible - like Harry Potter without the magic. Sometimes we went into town, and if we were caught chewing gum in our uniform, members of the public would take down our names and report us to the school.

I was a political refugee living in Venezuela. I had a job that was twelve hours a day, no money. It was a hard time.

After the scarlet fever and the whooping cough, I remember I started to get mad about it all... I went through the stage of asking myself, 'Wilma, what is this existence all about? Is it about being sick all the time? It can't be.' So I started getting angry about things, fighting back in a new way with a vengeance.

Big clubs in Europe always go through difficult spells where it appears as though there is no light at the end of the tunnel. But because they are big clubs, they always come back, and they do so with a vengeance.

As an African-American, I think the way I treated others affected how people treated me. If people do attack you in certain ways, you can focus on it and be vengeful in your approach or take the high road - get over it.

We're not just making 'Marco Polo,' we're living it. Because we traveled to Venice... Kazakhstan... into the jungles of Malaysia.

It was the summer of 1968 or so, and Dad and my little brother were out camping. While up in the mountains, my brother was bitten by a rattlesnake. As they raced back to the base, my dad sucked out the venom and used his hands as a tourniquet and probably save his life, for it was a serious bite, and he was just a little kid.

The goal of any true resistance is to affect outcomes, not just to vent. And the only way to affect outcomes and thrive in our lives is to find the eye in the hurricane and act from that place of inner strength.

I grew up on the street, and I found a way to vent my frustrations through fighting.

Tenacity is not about avoiding being overwhelmed but being indomitable in the face of the overwhelming odds of your venture's failure.

If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!