Quotes About Survival

Happy-ever-after is a fairy-tale notion, not history. I know of no woman who escaped from Chelmno alive.

Could it be that humans had an infinite capacity to make themselves at home in the direst of situations? Or did one just adjust expectations downward, so as to be able to get through each day?

People were dying around us, of starvation, tuberculosis, cholera, typhus, typhoid, deportation, influenza, heartbreak. Their lungs were filling up because of the cold. They were being shot for walking too quickly, staring too hard, not answering questions fast enough or answering too fast, or just because they wore the yellow star. To die was easy. To live was harder. Papa said to us, "We have chosen the more difficult path, that of life. Now we must walk it." We walked.

Truly, we'll be wolves no longer, but as the tinker said once along ago, we'll survive like the foxes, their children.

Almost everybody I know has died," Grandma said. "Bunch of wimps.

You think I'm gonna feel better eatin' a carrot? Get a grip. There's two idiots out there trying to kill me, and you think I'm gonna waste my last breath on a vegetable? (Lula)

Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs. Take us out of our environment and we can grow whatever body parts we need to survive. After Jersey the rest of the country's a piece of cake. You want to send someone into a fallout zone? Get him from Jersey. He'll be fine.

Life is about survival of the fittest, and Jersey is producing the master race.

We're not going to die. You're with me kiddo and it just happens I know a few survival skills. Oh yeah right. Like carrying your Visa Gold in case the restaurant doesn't accept American Express.

Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs.

Morelli had always seemed invincible to me. He waded through crap every day and it all washed off in the shower. Even as a kid he was constantly getting into trouble and landing on his feet. He broke his leg and he was fine. He was shot and he was fine. Never defeated. And now he was the victim of cramping and diarrhea and he wasn't sounding good.

She stuffed the goodies into her hidden running belt, jogged out of the park, and went shopping for duct tape, a razor blade, paper clips, and another disposable phone.

I have people trying to kill me. A giraffe is low on my list of disturbances.

propped up on cinderblocks. An electric

Sometimes when we are coming down from the many drugs we must take to make it through the night in this hellhole kitchen, we leave the cleanup to morning," Raymond said.

Whose birthday?" I asked. "No one's," Connie said. "We're celebrating that you're not dead.

came out alive," Kate said.

One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.

Kindness was the last thing she needed. She had to stay in the icy place, the numb place, and their warmth threatened to melt her just when she needed the cold.

I would rather live out on the desert alone, like an old prospector. All I needed was a small water source. What was the point in such loneliness among people. At least if you were by yourself, you had a good reason to be lonely.

How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.

She was sorry to have hurt her, but she wanted them all to leave her alone, let her keep it together. Kindness was the last thing she needed. She had to stay in the icy place, the numb place, and their warmth threatened to melt her just when she needed the cold.

At times like this I surprise myself, how I've managed to create something of a life on this foggy shore out of the broken pieces of myself, scavenged from the sea like flotsam. Or is it jetsam…it irks me not to know the difference.

I looked at my life and saw quite clearly that I was not surviving it in the turquoise house. I was letting my sails crust up with salt. I had to stop playing johnny johnny and concentrate on preparing for rain, preparing for rescue.