Quotes About Survival

Not to sound too Dr. Phil all of a sudden, but I think the key to survival is to embrace one's past and to not run away from it. And to come to some sort of relationship with it or understanding of it.

When I was married to an abuser, he'd tell me he wouldn't have to get so angry if only I'd be less demanding, more supportive, more understanding. I hid the truth from everyone, especially myself.

Anyone who understands evolution knows that it doesn't necessarily lead from simpler to more complex life-forms. Rather, it leads to life-forms better suited to their environments.

To say that the grocery business is cutthroat would be a major understatement.

Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival?

I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.

If you think about evolution, sleep, at some time, was a dangerous undertaking. You lie down in your cave or shelter, and along comes a predator and has you for dinner. Many creatures do not sleep or sleep while standing so they can escape from dangerous situations.

I bled a lot. I got hit across the face. We couldn't film for seven days. I got hit, whacked, underwater, across the face. I finished the shot, got into the boat and blood started coming out.

As a kid I used to hold my breath longer than anybody else, and then I heard stories about people accidently underwater for 45 minutes - how do you recover from that? It's not a miracle. Something allows us to survive.

It was really tough being in jail. It doesn't get much lower. You're in a filthy room. The food is terrible, and you're surrounded by people who have done all types of crazy crimes. You have nothing that belongs to you, not even your own underwear. It's just terrible.

You should always carry string, according to my archaeologist father, because then you could at least make a trap to catch animals to survive. According to my grandmother, it was clean underwear.

My mother was always in those films where it's the end of the world and a meteor's about to hit London; there's only six people left, and one of them's in purple underwear. That was always my mother, running from this meteor in purple underwear and spraining her ankle.

I kept auditioning, with no savings and no money, credit card debt gaining interest. I went on unemployment. I bought ramen noodles at dollar stores. I never had to - God forbid - live on the streets.

It's just as easy for me to be building a fence somewhere and scraping by on unemployment in between doing a guest star spot. I've been there.

Of course you've got a low unemployment rate when people have got to work two and three jobs just to make ends meet.

The only real things in life is the unexpected things. Everything else is just an illusion.

Most travel disasters turn into something else: a story of survival, a story of bravery, of heroism, sometimes villainy. You just don't know when it starts where it's going to go because they are unexpected events.

To me that is what the Odyssey is all about, it's about being in the world and unexpected challenges and dangers are thrown at you.

It's true that my stories seem to deal with the end of the world. I've often been called the high priest of gothic miserablism, which is slightly unfair.

'Between Shades of Gray' is a story of astonishing force. I feel grateful for a writer like Ruta Sepetys who bravely tells the hard story of what happens to the innocent when world leaders and their minions choose hate and oppression. Beautiful and unforgettable.

The swim at Deception Island was by far the hardest swim I've ever done. Antarctica is a very unforgiving environment. If you don't train properly, you'll die.

The Australian Outback can be quite unforgiving.

A lot of people work extremely hard and through no fault of their own - bad luck, the wrong environment, unfortunate circumstances - struggle to survive.

In them days, it was just still not illegal to kill an Indian. If you killed an Indian, you'd be very unfortunate if you got probation - most of them were released immediately.