Quotes About Adversity

Growing up, I got a chance to witness a lot of struggle in my neighborhood. A lot of people struggled, myself included. As I got older I noticed that there was still a lot of struggling going on.

I have lived with extraordinary women, whether it was my grandmother, my mother. My father passed away when I was 16... I was witness to a woman who single handedly brought up the entire family and managed to do everything... She was an extraordinary role model for me.

I was witness to a beautiful relationship between cricketer Anil Kumble and a boy suffering from muscular dystrophy. Moved, I wrote 'Spin' - a small film about a cricketer and a spastic boy. But I couldn't find backing.

I certainly witnessed bullying as a teen in both a small and a big school setting. I feel like it is a universal topic.

Certainly, anyone whom I've witnessed, who has gone through something horrible and life-changing, has a sense of ironic humor, or an ability to look at the peculiarities of the world and find humor in it.

The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering.

I've witnessed the survival of the theatre several times when it was meant to be dying.

It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is.

That's always been the driving force on the show, we're the ones who should be getting put in bad situations not the other people, they're more like witnesses. That's really like the big spin that we thought was good.

He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.

Immigration has defined my entire life. My parents left Mozambique with nothing but their wits in search of a better life for their kids. They moved to England in the 1970s, saw the classism there, and left for America soon after.

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable.

When my disease nearly destroyed me in 2009, my doctors thought I'd be lucky to regain 80 percent of my cognitive abilities. When I was at my sickest, I couldn't read or write. I could barely walk on my own or groom myself. The disease felled me physically and mentally - robbing me, briefly but intensely, of my wits, my sanity, my memory, my self.

Out of economic hardship can come change - we are suddenly cast onto our wits and our talents and our resources and our strengths, as we lose all the choices we once had.

All Premier League fixtures are tricky, you always need your wits about you whether you are playing top or bottom.

Adversity will only sharpen our wits and make us more strong-willed, resulting in the political awakening of more Hong Kongers, not to mention the international community's support.

If you fight angry, you make a lot of mistakes, and when you fight a sharp, witty fighter like me, you can't make mistakes.

I've had three wives and three guitars. I still play the guitars.

Some of the wives didn't keep up with the program. It started breaking apart during the Apollo days.

Well even before she was diagnosed with the cancer, I would have said that she was a lot tougher than me and most guys would probably say that about their wives and it's probably true in most cases.

I sleep in peace, even if only in the company of lice, behind bars. The same could not be said of my incarcerators though they sleep in warm beds, next to their wives, in their homes.

In the late '90s, the magazine formerly known as 'The Wizard' came after me strong and hard. I was the brunt of jokes for an entire staff of angry fanboys; as much as can be poured on was poured on. But I kept focus, as anyone in that situation should.

Cummings' career as a writer - and a painter - was as wobbly as his love life. He tried his hand at playwriting, satirical essays, and even a dance scenario for Lincoln Kirsten.

I really never look at my health issues as 'Woe is me.' I've seen the reality of that. And it's not a pleasant thing.