Surviving Quotes

“We just did an awesome job of not dying.”
― John Green, Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

“You need to spend time crawling alone through shadows to truly appreciate what it is to stand in the sun.”
― Shaun Hick

“The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of the night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and listening and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve it or deserve anything yet it is here and I am here and I Have it all of it still. I won't have it again. This moment or this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving. ”
― James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

“Don't play his game. Play yours.”
― Rachel Caine, Fall of Night

“I had a long talk with my dear Fat Mary that night, because I had many questions. Could someone actually be beaten to death by such a nun? Did Mother Rufina, the new Superior, know that Sister Clotilda was so cruel? Who let her work with children? Could nuns go to hell?
Fat Mary told me she didn’t know the answers to my questions, but she reminded me that it was her role to take my worries and burdens and keep them for me until a time when I could understand them.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child

“What do your parents know, about surviving? ”
― Lemony Snicket, The End

“Fine," Connor tells him. "Think about stuff until your head explodes. But the only thing I want to think about is surviving to eighteen."

I find your shallowness both refreshing and disappointing at the same time. Do you think that means I need therapy?”
― Neal Shusterman, Unwind

“You were born a winner, a warrior, one who defied the odds by surviving the most gruesome battle of them all - the race to the egg. And now that you are a giant, why do you even doubt victory against smaller numbers and wider margins? The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.”
― Oswald Spengler

“Thriving. That's fighting... Surviving is barely getting by.”
― Jillian Michaels

“There's a difference between living and just surviving. Do something you love, and find someone to love who loves that you love what you do.
It is really that simple.
And that hard.”
― John Connolly, The Infernals

“He leans in, resting his weathered hand on the bed. "Treat all the bad things like dreams, Kenzie. That way, no matter how scary or dark they get, you just have to survive until you wake up.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“Is this some sort of test?"
"Everything that doesn't kill you is."
"Mind you," he added, "surviving doesn't always mean you passed.”
― Michelle Sagara West, Cast in Secret

“She looked up. "What I can't figure out is why the good things always end."
"Everything ends."
"Not some things. Not the bad things. They never go away."
"Yes, they do. If you let them, they go away. Not as fast as we'd like sometimes, but they end too. What doesn't end is the way we feel about each other. Even when you're all grown up and somewhere else, you can remember what a good time we had together. Even when you're in the middle of bad things and they never seem to be changing, you can remember me. And I'll remember you.”
― Torey Hayden, Torpedo Run / Banners Of Silk / My Left Foot / Trojan Treasure

“More than most, I know the pain of surviving.”
― Ann Aguirre, Aftermath

“Why wait? So precious is this life—this gift—this temporary blindness. Burn and drown and embrace the false dark, then grasp the unthinkable height of resulting joy. For in the end, in the light of truth when the flesh is cast off, there is nothing but this.”
― Jennifer DeLucy

“The best thing you can say to someone going through a tragic loss is not that

"It's going to be alright"

It is:
"Hold on tight because this is going to hurt like hell".”
― JohnA Passaro

“I certainly couldn't have survived my childhood without books. All that deprivation and pain--abuse, broken home, a runaway sister, a brother with cancer--the books allowed me to withstand. They sustained me. I read still, prolifically, with great passion, but never like I read in those days: in those days it was life or death.”
― Junot Díaz

“The energy it took to exit mother’s womb is the same force required to manifest a dream...a different kind of struggle. Push, push, push!”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“At times I've struggled to feel seen, to have my history feel seen, to have where I come from feel seen because I 'turned out great.' But that doesn't meant that I Am Fine. I am working every day, tirelessly, like you wouldn't believe, on being fine, f**king finally, can we get this over with, I'm so tired and I just want to travel and eat and smile and move through the world with a semblance of peace.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Narcissists play a public game and a private game which makes it harder to understand. Expressing your concerns suddenly turns you into the ‘jealous one’ and they make you doubt yourself. He/she becomes cold and uncaring almost overnight, this is when the “mask falls” and you see the real person. They make excuses and if we don’t except these excuses then you are the ‘crazy’ one. They are managing down your expectations from constant contact to crickets this verbally and emotional abuse hurts.”
― Tracy Malone

“Even if I wrote on nothing else, it would never be enough, even if all the survivors did nothing but write about their experiences, it would still not be enough.

*Response when asked how much longer is he going to write about the Holocaust”
― Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea

“These moments of remaining alone in my apartment, of not going to asylum, were minor victories, even if the thought of keeping myself alive was worse than the thought of death.”
― Suzanne Scanlon, Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen

“Life is like that. You think you’re just slogging along and then something reminds you that just getting up in the morning and choosing to live is something miraculous. I try to hold that with me. I need to hold that with me.”
― Ada Limon

“Leadership doesn’t come from titles; it comes from tending to your own wounds and still choosing to lift others.”
― Hagir Elsheikh

“... taking steps isn’t moving forward. Drawing breath for the sake of life isn’t living.”
― Kayleigh Nicol, Mistress Mage

“Defiance isn't always dramatic—sometimes it's simply surviving with your integrity intact.”
― Tiffany Higgins, What Happened to the Oranges?: Fifteen Literary Short Stories of Quiet Defiance, Surrealism, and Moral Dilemmas

“Survival without preparation is just delayed chaos.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making

which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements

each one making possible the next”
― Adrienne Rich, Diving Into the Wreck

“Everett Anderson says, "I knew
my daddy loved me through and through,
and whatever happens when people die,
love doesn't stop, and
neither will I.”
― Lucille Clifton, Everett Anderson's Goodbye