Quotes About Survival

Some day our cities would open up and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big.

People die every day, psychologically speaking. Some part of them gets tired. And that small part tries to kill off the entire person.

And the men of Mars realized that in order to survive they would have to forgo asking that one question any longer: Why live? Life was its own answer.

Second, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that.

How did this happen? It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know I'm drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive?

The world swarms with people, each one drowning, but each swimming a different stroke to the far shore.

No, we'll save what we can, we'll do what there is left to do. If we have to burn, Let's take a few more with us.

First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all. Secondly, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that. Not to write, for many of us, is to die.

The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.

we're the start of an amazing, dumbfounding history of survival that will only get better as the centuries pass.

Ye gods and fishes, lad, every town has its resident witch. Every town hides some old Greek pagan priest, some Roman worshipper of tiny gods who ran up the roads, hid in culverts, sank in caves to escape the Christians! In every tiny village, boy, in every scrubby farm the old religions hide out . . . all the little lollygaggin' cults, all flavors and types, scramble to survive. See how they run, boys!

The ability to fantasize is the ability to survive, and the ability to fantasize is the ability to grow.

This is the emotional thing, you see — you must galvanize people, so they want to be completely alive and live forever, or the next thing to it. And out of that comes art, then, and survival through emotion.

Non più tardi dell'altra sera, ogni cosa era perfetta, poi, ad un tratto, mi sono accorto che stavo affogando. Per quante volte un uomo può andare a fondo e rimanere ancora vivo?

You must remember, burn them or they'll burn you.

It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know I'm drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can't breathe.

let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big.

Taking your pinch of arsenic every morn so you can survive to sunset. Another pinch at sunset so that you can more-than-survive until dawn. The mirco-arsenic-dose swallowed here prepares you not to be poisoned and destroyed up ahead.

Where did I find the courage to rebel, change my life, live alone? I don't want to over-estimate all this, but damn it, I love that nine-year-old, whoever in hell he was. Without him, I could not have survived to introduce these essays.

I saw that most of the Irish I met had a variety of ways of making do with that dreadful beast Reality. You can run into it head-on, which is a dire business, or you can skirt around it, give it a poke, dance for it, make up a song, write you a tale, prolong the gab, fill up the flask. Each partakes of Irish cliché, but each, in the foul weather and the foundering politics, is true.

All of his books were burned in the Great Fire. That's thirty years ago—2006.

post-apocalyptic world where death provides the best way out of a ravaged landscape.

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all. Secondly, writing is survival.

Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.