Quotes About Survival

Few, if any, survive their teens.

If I survived at all, it would be a triumph. If I swam, it would be a miracle. As I unlocked my door, I thought of my mother putting her age back fifteen years and going into the merchant marines. I had to try. If I ended in defeat, at least I would be trying. Trying to overcome was black people's honorable tradition.

Never let white folks know what you really think. If you're sad, laugh. If you're bleeding inside, dance.

The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.

Upon reflection, I marvel that no one saw through me enough to bundle me off to the nearest mental institution. The fact that it didn't happen depended less on my being a good actress than the fact that I was surrounded, as I had been all my life, by strangers.

Life was cheap and death entirely free.

Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants.

The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can't. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.

Africans find it hard to forgive us slavery, don't they? He took my hand and said, I thought you would have known that. My dear, they can't forgive us, and even more terrible, they can't forgive themselves. They're like the young here in this tragic country [Germany]. They will never forgive their parents for what they did to the Jews, and they can't forgive the Jews for surviving and being a living testament to human bestiality.

Thus we lived through a major war. The questions in the ghettos was, can we make it through a minor peace?

People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all.

We were on top again. As always, again. We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls. I was no longer simply a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.

It's all right if we do a little robbing now." This belief appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.

This is not their place. In time they will pass. Ghana was here when they came. When they go, Ghana will be here. They are like mice on an elephant's back. They will pass." In

For centuries we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices and even their odors. Often our survival had depended upon the accurate reading of a white man's chuckle or the disdainful wave of a white woman's hand. Whites, on the other hand, always knew that no serious penalty threatened them if they misunderstood blacks. Whites were safely isolated from our concerns.

13. "We survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets," (this page) Angelou says of Black people. Do you think that this is true of all cultures? 14. The book title is a reference to a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Why do you think that Angelou chose this title?

They fought too hard, they loved too well. My crime is I'm alive to tell.

There were worse things than death, as she'd discovered. Sometimes living took far more courage. Facing another day. Enduring. Those things took strength. Far more than dying.

You don't understand. How could you? We were in the worst sort of hell. We weren't living day to day or even hour to hour. We survived minute by excruciating minute. The next day was an eternity away and we didn't want it. Death wasn't the enemy. It was our salvation.

It's not ugly. It's a mark of courage. Of survival. I think you're beautiful.

Inch by inch, they chipped away until soon there would be nothing left to salvage.

She very nearly reached for his hand, but curled her fingers into a fist instead. He wouldn't appreciate her pity, and how did you pity a man who'd survived hell? You didn't pity him. You admired him.

Trying to drown me, woman?" "You can't drown a SEAL," she taunted. "How embarrassing would that be?" "God yes," he muttered. "Shoot me, hang me, let me die of infection from a hangnail, but don't let me die in the water. They'd send me to hell on principle.

Wasn't that the way of the world, though? Only the strong survived, and the weak perished.