Quotes About Survival

The meaning of life is life itself. Life fighting to stay alive in a cold, dark universe.

Tiger, Tiger, by Margaux Fragoso.

We will do anything to get away from our own pain. We will change our lives, rip people out, swallow a bottle of life-ending pills. When we hurt more than we can bear, when our lives get that dark, it's shocking what we will do to protect ourselves.

Once a 'Romeo Pimp' has gained a victim's trust, he systematically breaks down her resistance, support systems, and self-esteem. Victims are coerced into submission through gang rape, confinement, beatings, torture, cutting, tattooing, burning, branding, being deprived of basic needs, and threats of murder."   —The State of Human Trafficking in California

The two pigeons killed had just given birth. And now the baby pigeon doesn't know who he is. He is going through an identity crisis.

I had to kill or be killed... It was the only way I could survive... But I never enjoyed it like YOU do. Yes, my EYE is different from yours... But never forget... I'm also human.

I've learned and unlearned all my life; it's helped me to survive. There are no constants, nothing is immutable, only random circumstance from which our experience builds a coherent arc of life. And for that arc you have only to be truly done with one thing before moving to another. There's an art in letting go.

So we survive, it is the world.

Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something, ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms. It was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough's army, than to think they'd been alive a year ago. It was as if all the other wars had distilled themselves into this war, and that made it something you almost can't challenge. It's like a very deep voice, saying; 'Run along, little man, be glad you've survived

We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.

We're going to survive—our songs, our stories. They'll never be able to forget us. Decades after the last man who fought at Troy is dead, their sons will remember the songs their Trojan mothers sang to them. We'll be in their dreams—and in their worst nightmares too.

Everyday there's something to survive.

The first person to really speak to me was Andy, which was lucky, since he was the least crazy. He stank, but I suspected I did too. I never took off my clothes, always ready for fight or flight, needing to feel a little armoured. Deodorant was a luxury I couldn't afford, and I wasn't about to attempt a bath in a room that didn't lock, and which was always in high demand. Not to mention that there was no plug for the tub, or hand soap, or towels, or curtain, or mat.

There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.

When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children

He was tough as an antique ivory figurine, which has withstood the viscissitudes of centuries and can accept more.

It was strange, she thought, pedaling steadily, that it should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.

Whatever it is out there, is better equipped than you are. It can see better and hear better and smell better. All you're got on it is brains. Your only chance of getting it is

Since The Day, he had lived in the imperative present, not daring to plan beyond the next meal or the next day. This bit of paper tacked on peeling white paint abruptly enlarged his perspective, as if, stumbling through a black tunnel, he saw, or thought he saw, a chink of light. If Man retained faith in God, he might also retain faith in Man.

noticed that it was a clear and beautiful spring day, a better day than yesterday. The spores of kindness, as well as faith, survived in this acid soil. Randy

How can we cash out-of-town checks when don't know whether a town's still there?

To live is to fight.

Married people from my generation are like an endangered species!

Rats were eagerly eaten, and hard cabbage-stalk, with raw potato-peelings, which had been thrown into the sewers, was used for food.