The Survivors Club Quotes

“In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action and embracing this paradox can save your life.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“Survivors aren’t superheroes who vanquish adversity every time and live happily ever after. If you think they’re always triumphant, you’re wrong. They’re regular people who win some and lose some. They share a mind-set but they don’t all possess the same personality. They overcome adversity but they don’t necessarily accomplish it the same way. They aren’t always adaptable and optimistic; they feel stuck and gloomy, too.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“sit within five rows of an exit. Memorize an escape plan. And perhaps most important of all: try to relax.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“The full flowering of human resilience is awesome,” he says. Every human being is born with the strength to heal. No amount of violence or torture can destroy that capacity. No barbarism or savagery can crush the ability to recover and rebuild. “Even in the most hopeless human being,” he tells me, “there is hope.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“They even come equipped with a built-in antibiotic called squalamine that helps them resist infections.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“I figured out that letting ‘the world’ hurt me served a few functions extremely well: It provided me with a kind of nurturing I didn’t otherwise know how to attract, I couldn’t be pinned with total responsibility, and it provided physical pain, a reason to cry that others could understand. So much easier than trying to explain all the accumulated rage and numbness and sadness.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“Sam writes in her funny, fascinating memoir, Not By Accident.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“Fourth, lucky people have a special ability to turn bad luck into good fortune. Of all four defining factors involved in luck, Wiseman believes this one plays the most important role in survival.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“When you can’t fight or flee,” she says, “you flow.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“My patients are people who live on the edge of survival and beyond,” he writes in his excellent book Surviving the Extremes.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“The third rule underscores the Japanese proverb that adversity makes a jewel of you.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“But at the bottom,” he writes in his powerful memoir Den of Lions, “in surrender so complete there is no coherent thought, no real pain, no feeling, just exhaustion, just waiting, there is something else. Warmth/light/softness. Acceptance, by me, of me. Rest. After a while, some strength. Enough, for now.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“My definition of survivor encompasses people going through difficult times and also the friends and family who stand beside them. In the cancer community, they’re called cosurvivors or secondary patients.”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life

“Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty. —ELIE WIESEL”
― Ben Sherwood, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life