Quotes About Adversity

Sherman Alexie

Because the thing you learn as a hugely ambitious Indian is that you're often going to be the only Indian in the room, so you'd better get used to it.

He was the loser Indian father of a loser Indian son living in a world built for winners.

If I had a baseball bat and bulldozer, maybe I could stop him. But without real weapons, without a pistol, a man-eating lion, and a vial of bubonic plague, I had zero change of competing against him.

Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No poverty only teaches you how to be poor.

Poverty was our spirit animal.

It's hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer. Still, Indians have a way of surviving. But it's almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It's the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn't take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins.

If you weren't good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own.

taste failure in the tap water

We're not the damned, folks, we're the categorically fucked. - Urian

The strongest steel is forged by the fires of hell. (Savitar)

Over, under, around, or through. There is always a way. - Soteria

Baby, it's either laugh or cry and crying takes way too much energy. If you can't find humor in the shit life heaps on you, you really will grow miserable.

Sorrow spares no one, and scars respect no person.

You dare to stand with my enemy? (Stryker) Against you, Father, I'd stand with Mickey Mouse. (Urian)

Strength through adversity. The strongest steel is forged by the fires of hell. It is pounded and struck repeatedly before it's plunged back into the molten fire. The fire gives it power and flexibility, and the blows give it strength. Those two things make the metal pliable and able to withstand every battle it's called upon to fight. (Savitar)

You can take my life, but you'll never break me. So bring me your worst... And I will definitely give you mine.

Just remember, anger is always your enemy. You must keep your emotions in check. The moment you lose control of them, you lose the fight every time. (Takeshi)

Acheron always says that our scars are there to remind us of out pasts, of where we've been and what we've gone through. But that pain doesn't have to drive or determine our future. We can rise about it if we let ourselves. It's not easy, but nothing in life ever is. -Sundown

Tragedy and adversary are the stones we sharpen our swords against so we can fight new battles.

You have to learn to smile through your pain. Sometimes it's all we got.

The strongest of metals is forged under the most violent of conditions, my lord. It is buried deep in the hottest coals and then beat and pounded until it is bent into shaped. Then it becomes the strongest, most lethal of weapons. A thing of absolute beauty and force

But as the Roman playwright Terence once wrote, From many a bad beginning great friendships have formed

You will fail and I'll dance on your grave. (Apollymi)