Quotes About Resilience

She'd hoped, like one of those desert rattlesnakes, to shed the skin of her anguish and leave it behind her in the Mexican dirt.

Lydia has a growing sense that her very humanity is under siege,

She doesn't have the reservoir of space to take anything else into her brain.

Less than two weeks ago, dirt on the floor in her hallway was a thing that could annoy her. It's unimaginable. The reality of what happened is so much worse than the very worst of her imaginary fears had ever been. But it could be worse still.

No one can stay in a brutal, bloodstained place.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

This silk tassel tree has grown up from his spine, the indigenous plants have flourished and died here around his ankles, the fox, sparrows and meadowlarks have nested in his hair, the rains and wind and sun have beaten down across the rigid expanse of his shoulders, and Luca has never moved. We are rocks.

Her body feels like cracked glass, already shattered, and held in place only by a trick of temporary gravity. One wrong move and she will come to pieces.

Despite everything, he likes being alive.

I've seen bad things, too," he assures her. "Yeah?" He nods. "I guess you wouldn't be on top of this train if you hadn't.

Lydia knows she's increased their chances of survival. She needs to take encouragement where she can find it. She mustn't despair at the enormity of the task yet ahead. She should focus only on the immediate next steps.

He can prolong the moment of irrational hope that maybe some sliver of yesterday's world is still intact.

Every one of them, once or twice at least, every one of them despairs. The only thought that sustains them is the notion that each moment they endure this misery is one less moment they have yet to endure.

Marta's death changed everything, of course. It changed everything.

The worst will either happen or not happen, and there's no worry that will make a difference in either direction.

Everything we've been through?" Soledad says. "It'll all be worth it. We'll leave it behind and have a new beginning." Rebeca looks at the floor but her eyes are unfocused. "Like it never happened," she says. They

They're both smart, quick to learn. But their lives have been so expansive, their traumas so adult. They are young women and now they're meant to clip themselves into a three-ring binder each day. They're meant to hang their jackets in lockers and flirt with boys in the hallways. They're supposed to regress into shapes that were never familiar to them.

Trauma waits for stillness.

There are twenty-three migrants here, and despair has settled into their features like a powdery dust.

she feels as tatty as a scrap of lace, defined not so much by what she's made of, but more by the shapes of what's missing.

The worst will either happen or not happen, and there's no worry that will make a difference in either direction. Don't think.

Era la sed y el hambre, y tú fuiste la fruta. Era el duelo y las ruinas, y tú fuiste el milagro. —Pablo Neruda, "La canción desesperada

Luis Alberto Urrea, Óscar Martínez, Sonia Nazario, Jennifer Clement, Aída Silva Hernández, Rafael Alarcón, Valeria Luiselli, and Reyna Grande.

Pero no te preocupes, mi reina del alma—tu sufrimiento será breve.