Quotes About Resilience

Sometimes I think high school is one long hazing activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become and adult. I hope it's worth it.

I was in a race to see if I would die from the outside in or the inside out.

It made me strong.I took a step back, near my whole self in the mirror.I pushed back my shoulders and raised my chin, my back straight as an arrow.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn't my fault. He hurt me. It wasn't my fault. And I'm not going to let it kill me. I can grow.

She cannot chain my soul. Yes, she could hurt me. She'd already done so. But what was one more beating? A flogging, even? I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. Live, or not. But she could no longer harm Ruth, and she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her. This was a new notion to me and a curious one.

I didn't fit. I was a different size, a different shape. I kept trying to squeeze into a body, a skin suit, that was too small. It rubbed me the wrong way. I blistered. I callused. I scarred over and it kept hurting. I would never fit. But, really, I didn't want to fit. That's why it was hard.

I doubt trees are ever told to 'be the screwed-up ninth-grader.'

This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.

This camp is a forge for the army; it's testing our mettle. Instead of heat and hammer, our trials are cold and hunger. Question is, what are we made of?

The time has come to arm-wrestle some demons.

I closed my eyes and let my enemy win.

They said I had to get fatter. I told them my goal was 080.00 and if they wanted my respect, they'd better stop lying to me. When my brain started working again, I checked their math. Someone had made a mistake because they didn't figure in the snakes in my head and the thick shadows hiding inside the cage of my ribs.

Don't forget how to be gentle, she warned. Don't let the hardness of the world steal the softness of your heart.

My only choice was to fight my way out, even if I didn't think I would make it.

Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners.

And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.

If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl?

Too many grown ups tell kids to follow their dreams, like that's going to get them somewhere. Auntie Laurie says follow your nightmares instead. Because when you figure out what's eating you alive, you can slay it.

It's always there—fear—and if you don't stay on top of it, you'll drown.

untreated pain is a cancer of the soul that can kill you

I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here.

I can't let me hear this, but it's too late. The facts sneak in and stab me.

Keep home in your heart, where no one can steal it.

thoughts hidden there? If she can, what will she do? Call the cops? Send me to the nuthouse? Do I want her to? I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head. Maybe I should wait until David Petrakis is a doctor, let him do it.