Quotes About Resourcefulness

She could not move fast against the weight of water, not against a mounted man, so she did the only thing she could and hurled the boar spear across the horse's path, straight into the bank.

Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can't drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can't have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.

You give a poet a bucket of worms, he'll probably put the whole bucket on the end of the hook.

Self-reliance is the autonomy of individuals to navigate issues as they arise, control his or her own path, and sustain the resources to get there.

Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.

Y}ou make do with what you're given, and I've spent a good many years learning to write fine-sounding sentences so that I can hide behind them. It's the way of the hermit crab, with nothing to recommend it but the pretty shell it annexes for its own.

Gather information. Seek weakness. Watch, wait, and do what you have to to stay alive!

I walked down the middle of the street looking and listening and trying to avoid potholes and chunks of broken asphalt. There was little other trash. Anything that would burn, people would use as fuel. Anything that could be reused or sold had been gathered. Cory used to comment on that. Poverty, she said, had made the streets cleaner.

Act as a kind of gang? No. Not quite a gang. We aren't gang types. I don't want gang types with their need to dominate, rob and terrorize. And yet we might have to dominate. We might have to rob to survive, and even terrorize to scare off or kill enemies. We'll have to be very careful how we allow our needs to shape us. But we must have arable land, a dependable water supply, and enough freedom from attack to let us establish ourselves and grow.

So long had it been since we had eaten civilized provisions that we could not identify it. After much reflection I realized that it was simply bread spread with lard or grease.

How will he get by in the desert without bowls and plates, without coal stoves, without carpets to lie down on with the little ones? Without his toilet, without the view from the window onto the square and the fountains with their crystal-clear water.

Surprising how well you can sleep on an old Morris chair if you work hard daytimes, or even on the floor if you get cramped. It's all a matter of getting used to it.

Use what you have to run toward your best - that's how I now live my life.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Los libros se hacen con lo que se tiene y no necesariamente con lo que se quiere.

I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious.

The first person to really speak to me was Andy, which was lucky, since he was the least crazy. He stank, but I suspected I did too. I never took off my clothes, always ready for fight or flight, needing to feel a little armoured. Deodorant was a luxury I couldn't afford, and I wasn't about to attempt a bath in a room that didn't lock, and which was always in high demand. Not to mention that there was no plug for the tub, or hand soap, or towels, or curtain, or mat.

How can we cash out-of-town checks when don't know whether a town's still there?

Rats were eagerly eaten, and hard cabbage-stalk, with raw potato-peelings, which had been thrown into the sewers, was used for food.

At times baking soda and yeast were not to be had. Individuals were issued rations, including flour, to utilize as best they could. Because of lack of equipment, especially when men were on the march, bread-making was sometimes accomplished in the manner described by Timothy Mitchell, writing home to southwest Virginia from Tennessee: "Our flour we make up in an oil cloth, back of a dirty shirt, or towel; roll it 'round a stick and hold it before the fire." [26]

Survivors can't always choose their methods.

People will do amazing things to ensure their survival.

We hadn't brought a tent. Even if it rained, we couldn't afford to blind ourselves like that when we slept.

The machete was needed anytime you had to slash out your own trail. This necessity arose more often than a person who is not a kid with a machete might think.