Quotes About Resilience

You only really discover the strength of your spine when your back is against the wall.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Vengeful conquerors burn books as if the enemy's souls reside there, too.

John: "Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out!" Richard: "Let's strike a flint and see.

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't... It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.

Exercise...because the soul isn't the only thing worth saving.

He forced his mind to picture a brick wall, to feel a brick wall, smell a brick wall, become a brick wall. He lost all sense of time, but the bricks stood out. He heard the voices questioning him, but he turned their sounds to bricks for his wall.

In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope.

In the end, despite the large volume of bad news, we can conclude with an affirmation. We can say with Wallace Stevens that 'after the final no there comes a yes.' Yes, we can save what is left. Yes, we can repair and make amends. We can reclaim nature and restore ourselves. There is a bridge at the end of the world.

But just remember, victories come singularly. It's the fuckups that gang up on you.

I don't think he ever gave a thought to other people's opinions, which was just as well because they were often unkind

a bullock, backing in alarm from the halter, crashed its craggy behind into my midriff. The wind shot out of me in a sharp hiccup, then the animal decided to turn round in the narrow passage, squashing me like a fly against the railings. I was pop-eyed as it scrambled round; I wondered whether the creaking was coming from my ribs or the wood behind me.

I like a women who's got some balls, some strength. As long as I can beat her at arm wrestling, that's fine.

If I hadn't of had music in my life, it's quite possible I'd be dead and I'd much rather be alive.

The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's astounding. Maybe they can't see or they can't hear, but they walk out into the street and take life as it comes. They're models of courage, in a strange way.

Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.

Fear is a huge thing for older people.

Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

What door is opened into soul through our wounds.

But now I'm beginning to care again—a little—and it hurts—it's really more convenient not to have any hopes and fears.

We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea,We'll o'er the water to Charlie;Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go,And live and die wi' Charlie.

The "gift" of tragedy is not destruction, but humility

It's hard now to imagine that kind of travel and the daily tasks they simply took for granted. If a wagon axle broke, you had to stop and carve a new one. To cross a river, you sometimes had to build a raft.