Quotes About Resilience

Clara said that Billie Holiday woke up crying. Clara said that if you sing the blues, you know that if you can't make friends with grief, you've got to at least make way for it.

She didn't believe, ever, that Jesus was going to deliver her to anything, anywhere. She said she absolutely did not believe that after two thousand years a white man was going to come back from his own lynching to help out Clara Williams or take her hand or be her friend.

Carny people'd punch you in the face before they'd let you tell them your troubles and strangle their own selves before they'd tell you theirs.

We were determined to be the people we wanted to be and not the blind, desperate people we were.

Criticism is like pain. It's not fun but if it doesn't hurt, no one pays attention.

I got by. I lived amputated, which sounds worse than it felt. I learned to do all kinds of large and small tasks, with part of me missing, and I feel pretty sure that the people who watched me in the world thought I was entirely able-bodied.

Every day is an up-and-down. (Roller-coaster ride makes it sound thrilling; it is not thrilling. The ups and the downs both hurt, it's a mistake to scream, and nothing moves quickly.)

Creating psychological safety is a constant process of smaller and larger corrections that add up to forward progress. Like tacking upwind, you must zig right and then zag left and then right again, never able to head exactly where you want to go and never quite knowing when the wind will change.

OpenTable CEO Christa Quarles tells employees, "early, often, ugly. It's O.K. It doesn't have to be perfect because then I can course-correct much, much faster.

I think I can do it," Lulu said. She had a lot of confidence, and, as long as it wasn't me forcing it on her, she loved a challenge.

This was one of those moments when I realized that my emotional baggage, once a few neatly packed pieces, was now like the Joads' truck, stacked high with old clothes, half a rocking chair, a mule, all barely secured with twine.

Sir... I... don't want... to... be... here," I said between sobs. There, I'd said it. Now everyone would be happy- Cadet Daily, my mother... Yes, you do, Davis." No, sir... I don't," I gasped. Homesick?" I shook my head from side to side. "No... sir... it's too much... like home.

Devon? Are you okay?" For the first time, Dom's voice sounds unsure. Devon sats nothing, not one word. She pushes herself up. She slides the papers toward herself. She slowly folds them into quarters. She closes her hand around them. Devon lifts her face to Dom's. Is she "okay"? Will she ever, ever be okay?

Her keeper jersey; she thinks of it now. The number 1 on its back. A lonely number. Only one goalkeeper on the field. Only one player who guards the net. Only one who stands strong and alone behind the other ten players on the field. No place to hide. No way to disappear.

Keep a cool surface. Calm. Detached. As inside a part of you has been shattered.

I am the kid who sticks her finger in the light socket. I am the person who doesn't check the expiration date on the milk. I am the idiot who has never looked before she leaped. I am the girl who is falling apart, right now.

Love doesn't break easily, I found. But people do.

Whoever decided that love should hurt sucks. It's been silent for too long, and I watch as Mom wipes a tear off her cheek. Whoever decided that life should hurt sucks even more.

Amy Goldman Koss

She lifted the girl's shirt, showing her ribs and the pointy bumps of her spine. They were like the bones of some animal who'd starved to death in the desert. Her flesh, the dark sand blown in thin drifts over the bones.

She's altered the rules on me. We weren't supposed to become the teenagers who 'have problems.

But my experience is that people who have been through painful, difficult times are filled with compassion.

More important than talent, strength, or knowledge is the ability to laugh at yourself and enjoy the pursuit of your dreams.

Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.