Quotes About Resilience

Si no puedes reírte de ti misma, vas a tener una vida muy complicada.

for the first time since the fire, my worries are gone. I feel a joy so strong it's almost painful—a knife's edge of joy.

Turtles carry their homes on their backs." Running her finger over the tattoo, she tells him what her dad told her: "They're exposed and hidden at the same time. They're a symbol of strength and perseverance." "That's very deep.

Mrs. Scatcherd says we should make a clean slate," I say. "Let go of the past." "I can let go of the past, no problem." He picks up the wool blanket that has fallen to the floor and tucks it around the lump of Carmine's body, covering the parts that are exposed. "But I don't want to forget everything.

and the National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia, Kansas,

Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story by Andrea Warren; Children of the Orphan Trains, 1854–1929 by Holly Littlefield; and Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains edited by J. Sanford Rikoon (which

out and folding it against

Christina Baker Kline

Fanny gives me a long hug. She holds my face in her small cold hands. "You are a good girl, Niamh," she says. "Don't let anybody tell you different.

made it through this year because I had to, because I had no options. But now that I've experienced comfort and safety, how can I go back? These thoughts take me to the edge of despair, so I will myself—I force myself—not to have them.

be totaled; we can't afford a new one.

Turtles carry their homes on their backs They're exposed and hidden at the same time. They're a symbol of strength and perseverance

I count a hundred steps and start again. My da used to say it's good to test your limits now and then, learn what the body is capable of, what you can endure. He said this when we were in the throes of sickness on the Agnes Pauline, and again in the bitter first winter in New York, when four of us, including Mam, came down with pneumonia. Test your limits. Learn what you can endure. I am doing that.

Molly is the opposite. So many things have gone wrong for her in her seventeen years that she's come to expect it. When something does go right, she hardly knows what to think.

she knew from experience that touch and weird is preferable to pathetic and vulnerable

No substitute for the living, perhaps, but I wasn't given a choice. I could take solace in their presence or I could fall down in a heap, lamenting what I'd lost.

Maybe humans are like that, she thought. Maybe the moments that meant something to you and the people you've loved over the years are the rings. Maybe what you thought you'd lost is still there, inside of you, giving you strength.

Christina Baker Kline

Aprendí hace mucho que la pérdida no solo es probable, sino inevitable.

Feeling around in the bag, he said, "Aw, shit. I meant to get you a chain to clip these on." He patted her knee. "Don't worry about it. That'll be part two." Two weeks later, coming home late one night, he lost control of his car, and that was that. Within six months, Molly was living somewhere else. It would be years until she bought herself that chain.

The smallest things get to her. It's as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn't -- which, of course, is pretty often -- she is surprised and affronted.

The ghosts whispered to me, telling me to go on.

as a week. She's been spanked with a spatula, slapped across

It was worse for Mam, who discovered on the boat she was again with child and could hardly keep any food down. But even with all of this, as I stood on the lower deck outside our dark, cramped rooms in steerage, watching the oily water churn beneath the Agnes Pauline, I felt my spirits lift. Surely, I thought, we would find a place for ourselves in America.