Quotes About Resilience

The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn't always safe, but it's often necessary.

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven't been wiped out by a plague so they're still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they'll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they're waiting for the old days to come back.

but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.

Praying makes people feel better even when there's no action they can take," he said. "I used to think that was all God was good for—to help people like my mother stand what they had to stand.

From what I've read," I said to him, "the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.

My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U.S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries—at least 10 generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can't begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren't.

I couldn't let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole.

Sometimes people say I look grim or angry. Better to have them think that than know the truth. Better to have them think anything than know just how easy it is to hurt me.

Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism.

She had learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones whose memories might overwhelm her. She

I began writing about power because I had so little.

When I was older, I decided that getting a rejection slip was like being told your child was ugly. You got mad and didn't believe a word of it. Besides, look at all the really ugly literary children out there in the world being published and doing fine!

All successful life is Adaptable, Opportunistic, Tenacious, Interconnected, and Fecund. Understand this. Use it. Shape God.

Clay was slowly deciding to kill himself. It was slow because, in spite of everything Clay did not want to die. He was just becoming less and less able to tolerate the pain of living.

Sometimes writing about a thing makes it easier to stand.

The thing is, we hear gunfire so much that we don't hear it.

We're survivors, Len. You are. I am. Most of Georgetown is. All of Acorn was. We've been slammed around in all kinds of ways. We're all wounded. We're healing as best we can. And, no, we're not normal. Normal people wouldn't have survived what we've survived. If we were normal we'd be dead.

Our adults haven't been wiped out by a plague so they're still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back.

Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things—customs—that are their own." "Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict," Aaor said. "It is," I agreed. "They're proving their independence at a time when they're no longer independent...

Gather information. Seek weakness. Watch, wait, and do what you have to to stay alive!

We are a harvest of survivors.

Power came the way a child came -- with agony.

Get focused on arranging to survive so that we can do more than just get batted around by crazy people, desperate people, thugs, and leaders who don't know what they're doing!" She