Quotes About Survival

I always thought eating was a ridiculous activity anyway. I'd get out of it myself if I could, though you've got to do it to stay alive, they tell me.

If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart.

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

I intend to get out of here. It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.

We battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.

Snowman wakes before dawn.

It's the end of the world every day, for someone.

I forgave her, of course. I always did; I had to, because there were only the two of us. The two of us on our thorn-encircled island, waiting for rescue; and, on the mainland, everyone else.

We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.

That's what you get for being food.

I have them, these attacks of the past, like faintness, a wave sweeping over my head.

At the time I thought, Why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that's happened to me since that day, I understand why. You hold it in, whatever it is, until you can make it through the worst part. Then, once you're safe, you can cry all the tears you couldn't waste time crying before.

Humanity is so adaptable [...] Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

After we're gone the work of our knives will survive this.

I knelt to examine the floor, and there it was, in tiny writing, quite fresh it seemed, scratched with a pin or maybe just a fingernail, in the corner where the darkest shadow fell: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Margaret Atwood

He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation. First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled.

But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?

In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects.

There were places you didn't want to walk, precautions you took that had to do with locks on windows and doors, drawing the curtains, leaving on lights. These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.

But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one. A story is like a letter. Dear You, I'll say. Just you, without a name. Attaching a name attaches you to the world of fact, which is riskier, more hazardous: who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours? I will say you, you, like an old love song.

Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last

Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive.

Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.