Quotes About Survival

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Only love can keep anyone alive...

if he fell, well, he fell—but if he survived he would become a monument, not carved in stone or encased in brass, but one of those New York monuments that made you say: Can you believe it? With an expletive. There would always be an expletive in a New York sentence. Even from a judge. Soderberg was not fond of bad language, but he knew its value at the right time. A man on a tightrope, a hundred and ten stories in the air, can you possibly fucking believe it?

The rim of a tightening lung.

So often, thought Rami, the ordinary can save us.

Survival, in fact, is about the connection between things. [Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism]

After Schächter's final performance, Eichmann is reported to have said: Those crazy Jews, singing their own requiem.

The soldiers called the bullets Lazarus pills: when possible, they could be picked up and used again.

Me preguntas por qué compro arroz y flores? Compro arroz para vivir y flores para tener algo por lo que vivir.

A lion chased me up a tree, and I greatly enjoyed the view from the top.

When the wind blows,the grass bends.

The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.

That a man lives is because he is straight. That a man who dupes others survives is because he has been fortunate enough to be spared.

It is the end of the world. Surely you could be allowed a few carnal thoughts.

Do you know the only way you can tell for sure the deer are there? Mel shook his head. By the wolves, he said.

Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.

Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?

The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we? No. Of course not. Even if we were starving? We're starving now. You said we werent. I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving. But we wouldnt. No. We wouldnt. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Yes. And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying the fire. Yes. Okay.

Hard people make hard times. I've seen the meanness of humans till I don't know why god ain't put out the sun and gone away.

The man watched him. Real life is pretty bad? What do you think? Well, I think we're still here. A lot of bad things have happened but we're still here. Yeah. You don't think that's so great. It's okay.

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

Cormac McCarthy

He did not know how hawks mated but he knew that all things fought.