Quotes About Survival

Kurt had this dumb suicidal ideation - that's what I called it. I thought if we could live through this, we could live through anything.

For a while I was suicidal and I tried to kill myself. I think I should have died about four times.

Depression is close to me, but suicide hasn't been.

My suit blew up into a parachute. All this water rushed in, there's air, water in there. I was freaking out.

You don't often see Bear Grylls in a suit.

The Tyne is at the bottom of my garden. When the river came up 16ft, 7ft of that went through my home. There wasnt only salmon in the Tyne - my three-piece suite was in there too. I had to be rescued. It was a year-and-a-half before we could move back in.

You definitely need a really decent bomb-proof summit suit, because that's what you wear in these extreme conditions and at extreme altitude.

Back in 2014, at the One Young World Summit in Dublin, I shared my story of my escape from North Korea to China in 2007. I had no idea what was coming or what to expect.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

My favorite moments? Where it's all going swimmingly, the sun's out and I've got a fire going and a nice snake on the barbecue.

Think about a seed. Once it lands, it's stuck. It can't move to find better soil, moisture or sunlight. It's able to create every part of itself to grow and reproduce with the help of air, water and sun.

If I were packing for a deserted island, I would bring sunscreen, a water purifier, something to start a fire with, my sister, and something for protection.

I think the 'Terminator' idea is a reasonable one - that is that one day the Internet becomes self-aware and simply says that humans are in the way. After all, if you meet an ant hill and you're making a 10-lane super highway, you just pave over the ants. It's not that you don't like the ants, it's not that you hate ants; they are just in the way.

I have held healthy respects of bears along with assorted crocodiles, snakes and lots of other animals. You know, bears are dangerous, you have to be super careful.

Shattered people are best represented by bits and pieces.

You see, I want a lot. Maybe I want it all: the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each ascent. So many are alive who don't seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched. But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival. You are not dead yet, it's not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.

Isn't it time that these most ancient sorrows of ours grew fruitful? Time that we tenderly loosed ourselves from the loved one, and, unsteadily, survived: the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.

For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

So many are alive who don't seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched. But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival. You are not dead yet, it's not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.

So many are alive who don't seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched.   But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival.

There is death in life, and it astonishes me that we pretend to ignore this: death, whose unforgiving presence we experience with each change we survive because we must learn to die slowly. We must learn to die: That is all of life.

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. (Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht. Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter, daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.)

You don't survive in me because of memories; nor are you mine because of a lovely longing's strength. What does make you present is the ardent detour that a slow tenderness traces in my blood. I do not need to see you appear; being born sufficed for me to lose you a little less.

Finally - we know this - life's little wisdom is to wait (but to wait in the proper, pure state of mind), and the great grace that is bestowed on us in return is to survive. (Letters on Life)