Survivor Quotes

Everybody who is alive is a survivor, and everybody who is dead isn't," I said."So everybody alive must have the Survivor's Syndrome. It's that or death. I am so damn sick of people telling me proudly that they are survivors! ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Though, the type of abuse differs from each individual, all survivors of child abuse deal with a certain extent of trauma, consciously or unconsciously. ~ Patricia Dsouza

I guess I'm a survivor. There are many of us survivors and any successful woman of my age has somewhat of that in her. ~ Helen Gurley Brown

The child turns up still trusting these lies to be the truth. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Crack!
I covered my head, ducked down. Bird didn't laugh. She likened me to a survivor of some traumatic event who is always spooked by certain noises.
She just touched my shoulder and said, "It went the other way."
I straightened up. "But it was a foul ball."
"Yeah."
I hated that I kept flinching. I wondered how long it was going to take before I could totally relax at a game. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

You'll beat this. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you will. You're a survivor."
"I don't want to survive it."
"I know that, too," Nell had said. "And it's fair enough. But sometimes we don't have a choice ... ~ Kate Morton

I have absolutely no objection to growing older. I am a stroke survivor so I am extremely grateful to be ageing - I have nothing but gratitude for the passing years. I am ageing - lucky, lucky me! ~ Sharon Stone

They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened
Exodus (1960) screenplay ~ Dalton Trumbo

I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through. ~ Daniel Barenboim

Do not be ashamed of your past. Learn from those experiences and move forward in your life. Teach others of the possibilities of change & living victoriously. You are a survivor. ~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

The wave of pure outrage blindsided me. I shouldn't be here, I thought. This is utterly fucked up. I should have been sitting in a garden down the road, barefoot with a drink in my hand, swapping the day's work stories with Peter and Jamie. I had never thought about this before, and it almost knocked me over: all the things we should have had. We should have stayed up all night together studying and stressing out before exams, Peter and I should have argued over who got to bring Jamie to our first dance and slagged her about how she looked in her dress. We should have come weaving home together, singing and laughing and inconsiderate, after drunken college nights. We could have shared a flat, taken off Interrailing around Europe, gone arm-in-arm through dodgy fashion phases and low-rent gigs and high-drama love affairs. Two of us might have been married by now, given the other one a godchild. I had been robbed blind. ~ Tana French

Still, I insisted that I was as entitled to a Survivor's Syndrome as my father, so she asked me two questions. The first one was this: "Do you believe sometimes that you are a good person in a world where almost all of the other good people are dead?"
"No," I said.
"Do you sometimes believe that you must be wicked, since all the good people are dead, and that the only way to clear your name is to be dead, too?"
"No," I said.
"You may be entitled to the Survivor's Syndrome, but you didn't get it," she said. "Would you like to try for tuberculosis instead? ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Most people I run into say, I haven't missed an episode. Either you like Survivor or you don't, but if you do, you're a loyal viewer. ~ Jeff Probst

observations suggest that the survivor as ANP typically engages in tasks of daily life such as reproduction, attachment, caretaking, and other social action tendencies, and avoidance of traumatic memories, which support a focus on daily life issues. In contrast, the survivor as EP primarily displays evolutionary defensive and emotional reactions to the (perceived) threat on which he or she seems to be fixated. Third, survivors should be very susceptible to classical conditioning, because, as we discuss below, EP and ANP strongly respond to unconditioned and conditioned threat cues. ~ Onno Van Der Hart

If my fall made you smile, you might not want to witness what's about to happen when I get up. ~ Yvonne Pierre

Loneliness can either kill you or teach you depending on you being either a fighter or a survivor ~ Vignesh S

Society must stop the silence and raise their voice to child sexual abuse. ~ Patricia Dsouza

The feeling of homelessness suddenly turned into something else. I called it freedom to wander. ~ Meara O'Hara

Many stroke survivors look back on their attack as a stroke of luck. Of course, by luck they mean horrible paralysis. ~ Dana Gould

Abused children realize that they cannot rely on their emotions since their innocent love and trust are already crushed and betrayed. They learn that whatever the opinion they do express may be ignored or mocked. ~ Patricia Dsouza

My niece was a sexual-assault victim. My sister is a survivor of domestic violence. We have more shelters for animals than for battered women. That's not the message we should be sending. ~ Hilda Solis

Dressed as a man, her horse unencumbered by anything but the bare necessities, she had the look of a survivor, a fighter, and he respected the hell our of her for it, especial when she slid the pistol our of one of the saddlebags and aimed it at him. ~ Alexandra Bracken

Dad: "You're a survivor yourself, then?" Augustus: "I am. I didn't cut this fella off for the sheer unadulterated pleasure of it, although it is an excellent weight-loss strategy. Legs are heavy!" Dad: ~ John Green

Survivor" is not a label you choose for yourself. ~ Harry Smith

First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you've done so wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, the good and the bad in a person sifted into separate compartments by some weird accident. Then, gradually, you realize that there isn't a reason, and it isn't two people you're dealing with, just one. The same one every time. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

I think the biggest challenge was being aware of a certain audience that was going to see this film [lone survivor]. There's a big difference from a typical movie, journalists and critics and film goers that go see it find that, that's the general experience you have as a filmmaker. So that just kind of proves my point that there's a really different audience. ~ Peter Berg

We are all specialised forms of survivor. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses. ~ Michel Faber

Ted was glad she didn't use the phrase survivor's guilt. He'd heard that so often it made him sick. Yes, he was alive, yes he felt guilt, but he was anything but a survivor. ~ Michael Knost

Do not become an accomplice by being silent, voice up! ~ Patricia Dsouza

The Soul is a fact, but it is not physical ... Survivors of near-death experiences attest that some part of them apparently detaches from their physical bodies following the death of the body, but while that is proof of the soul for them, it does not prove it to us. The Soul is like divine music that only God can hear; it is the force of endless resurrection; the soul is like a fire that never goes out. ~ Caroline Myss

I don't feel like a survivor. I feel left behind. ~ Helen Bevington

Walk down any sidewalk in any city and eventually you'll find a flower growing out of a crack in the concrete, tenaciously grasping for life, barely enough earth for it to clench hold of. This little flower has seeded, sprouted, and blossomed, despite thousands of feet walking over and around it every day. This flower is a survivor, thriving better than if it were in my Aunt Tilda's fucking backyard garden with her fussing over it day and night and giving it all the goddamned care she thought it needed. Yeah, eventually, some careless asshole's gonna trample and kill that flower, but another one's gonna replace it. [...] I'll always believe in you, Raeburn. You just have to find another crack in the sidewalk and blossom. Don't be another Kurt Cobain. Don't give up. People need you. ~ Pete Conrad

The truth of it is, the shame was not mine, and for all victims in similar situations, it is not ours. The shame is reserved for every creep who has ever touched us inappropriately. The shame is on the abuser, not the victim, not the survivor. It is tragic that so many of us have to survive this kind of crap, and I'm so sorry if it has happened to you. ~ Rose McGowan

My abuse will always be part of my memoirs, my past, my history, but will no longer be a front-page in my lifespan ~ Patricia Dsouza

I'm not interested in competing with anyone. I hope we all make it. ~ Erica Cook

People want to forget. No one would ever say it, but I think this town will be glad to see our class leave. They put up all the memorials you'd expect, but there was no need: we're living reminders. ~ Joseph Moldover

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. ~ Elie Wiesel

It is possible to heal. It is even possible to thrive. Thriving means more than just an alleviation of symptoms, more than Band-Aids, more than functioning adequately. Thriving means enjoying a feeling of wholeness, satisfaction in your life and work, genuine love and trust in your relationships, pleasure in your body. ~ Ellen Bass

Sometimes we wore such hurtful, limiting labels in this life, whether they'd been assigned by others or by ourselves. I'd felt damaged and ruined once, but I didn't anymore. I was still a work in progress, but I wasn't a victim. I was a survivor. - Gabriel ~ Mia Sheridan

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor. ~ Nile Rodgers

All were expecting to die, and every day of their life was a day of suffering and torment. All had witnessed terrible crimes, and the Germans would have spared none of them; the gas chambers awaited them. Most, in fact, were sent to the gas chambers after only a few days of work, and were replaced by people from new contingents. Only a few dozen people lived for weeks and months, rather than for days and hours; these were skilled workers, carpenters and stonemasons, and the bakers, tailors and barbers who ministered to the Germans' everyday needs. These people created an Organizing Committee for an uprising. It was of course, only the already-condemned, only people possessed by an all-consuming hatred and a fierce thirst for revenge, who could have conceived such an insane plan. They did not want to escape until they had destroyed Treblinka. And they destroyed it. ~ Chil Rajchman

I am passionate about the things that I believe in like equality, free will, justice and love. ~ Trish Kaye Lleone

Death fixes forever the relation existing between the departed spirit and the survivors upon earth. ~ John Quincy Adams

I feel so fortunate and grateful to be a survivor of breast cancer. I see it as a gift. ~ Olivia Newton-John

Punishment symptoms Many of the other types of programming produce psychiatric symptoms, usually administered as punishments by insiders who are trained to administer them, if the survivor has breached security or disobeyed the abusers' instructions in other ways. These symptoms serve a variety of purposes, such as disrupting therapy, getting the survivor into hospital, or getting the survivor to return to the perpetrators to have the programming reinforced.
p126 ~ Alison Miller

Whole night hanged with panic Sparking tears in those big wide eyes. ~ Patricia Dsouza

I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. My mother is a survivor of both polio and of the Igbo genocide during her country's civil war in the late 1960s. ~ Uzo Aduba

He loves me so he hurts me
To try and make me good.
It doesn't work. I'm just too bad
And don't do what I should.

My memory has so many different sections and, like all survivors, there are so many compartments with so many triggers. I'll remember a smell which reminds me of a man which reminds me of a place which reminds me of another man who I think was with a woman who had a certain smell - and I'm back to square one. This is the case for most survivors, I believe. When we try to put together our pasts, the triggers are many and varied, the memories are disjointed - and why wouldn't they be? We were children. Even someone with an idyllic childhood who is only trying to remember the lovely things which happened to them will scratch their head and wonder who gave them that doll and was it for Christmas or their third birthday? Did they have a party when they were four or five? When did they go on a plane for the first time? You see, even happy memories are hard to piece together - so imagine how hard it is to collate all of the trauma, to pull together all of the things I've been trying to push away for so many years. ~ Laurie Matthew

I believe we all heal differently, it is a process, and many like me are here to help you as you heal, as you recover. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Then Walter died as he lived, he told his mate. A hero, a soldier, and a survivor who chose to protect what was precious to him. I don't think, if you could ask him, that he would have any regrets. ~ Patricia Briggs

Laughter is the evidence that we're still here, the proof that our tragedies will not define us forever. Laughter is the language of the survivor. ~ Josh James Riebock

There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it. ~ Laurie Matthew

Give yourself mourning time and comprehend that expressing grief can modify your emotional and physical well being ~ Patricia Dsouza

I saw it all of a sudden. That whether I liked it or not, the survivor and the artist was me, not her. We're all conditioned to think of our children as more important than us, you know, and to live vicariously through them. All of a sudden I was sick of that kind of thinking. I may be dead tomorrow, I said to myself, but I'm alive now. And I can live deliberately. I've paid the price, I've done the work, and I have nothing to be ashamed of. ~ Jonathan Franzen

There's a book that I read, really a great book - it's called 'Lone Survivor' and I think they're trying to make it into a movie. I would love to play Marcus Luttrell, who was the author and the 'lone survivor.' He's a national hero; he's very courageous and heroic in insurmountable danger, so it's something I'd love to explore. ~ Jared Padalecki

Survivor is like rock 'n' roll - you can do what you want. ~ Jeff Probst

The 'Survivor' community is very tight. I mean very tight. ~ Jenna Morasca

I didn't like the 'Survivor' shows because of the mean-spirited aspect, and women certainly were part of whatever conflict they would create. ~ Sharon Lawrence

The strange thing was how quiet everything became just in that moment. Everything. All of existence, covered in a thick, still blanket of complete silence. The screeching tires and the yelling all paused. And then it happened: the white flash. It was blinding, taking away all definition of earth and sky, leaving nothing visible but the awful purity of the white. I remember that I flinched instinctively. That was all I really had time to do. Then, as if to announce my passing and that of all three-hundred-and-fourteen other souls working the midnight shift at the plant, came the roar. It was a guttural thunderous growl, like some great evil had just been released into the world. After that ... ~ Dennis Sharpe

When people ask me about what made the biggest difference in my healing, I tell them that I was believed and tremendously loved. I never felt blamed or shamed into silence. ~ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

'Castaways' was a play on what if a reality show like 'Survivor' was unknowingly set on an island inhabited by a sub-human race of creatures? Readers have often asked me to consider turning the short story into a full-length novel. So I did. ~ Brian Keene

I am a breast cancer survivor. I was intrigued to learn how many people prefer to talk to someone if they are familiar with their face, like an actor or a politician. So, I began traveling around the country and doing speeches. ~ Diahann Carroll

The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grows stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter ~ Haruki Murakami

She can't move forward or backward. She is stuck in time. A constant. ~ Mina Rehman

And when hope returns to us, it will be with a passion and power to match every ounce of this crushing despair and pain, every fiery shred of determination that carried us when hope failed. It will claim us with a courage that will make the goddess herself quake and doubt herself. ~ Rachel L. Schade

After the survivor of the Spanish conquest has told his life's story he is convicted by the Inquisition: He posted no brief in defense or mitigation of his offenses, and when he was most solemnly advised by the Court President of the dire consequences he faced if found guilty, Juan Damasceno volunteered only one comment: "It will mean I do not go to the Christian heaven?" He was told that that would indeed be the worst of his punishments: that he would most assuredly not go to Heaven. At which, his smile sent a thrill of horror through every soul of the Court. ~ Gary Jennings

In the book of Alma is a story that has fascinated e since I first read it. it is about a very colorful character named Moroni--not to be confused with the last survivor of the Nephites, who was also named Moroni. This man was a brilliant military commander, and he rose to be supreme commander of all the Nephite forces at the age of twenty-five. For the next fourteen years he was off to the wars continuously except for two very short periods of peace during which he worked feverishly at reinforcing the Nephite defenses. When peace finally came, he was thirty-nine years old, and the story goes that at the age of forty-three he died. Sometime before this he had given the chief command of the armies of the Nephites to his son Moronihah. Now, if he had a son, he had a wife. I've often wondered where she was and how she fared during those fourteen years of almost continuous warfare, and how she felt to have him die so soon after coming home. I am sure there are many, many stories of patience and sacrifice that have never been told. We each do our part, and we each have our story. ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley

It was as if hell itself had taken human form and come up from the abyss. ~ Brima Lamin & Chantale Wesley-Lamin, The Walk - Memoir Of A Liberian Civil War Survivor, 2016

The soldiers that didn't come back were the heroes. It's a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you're a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you're a survivor. ~ Bob Feller

Secrets are truths that show what we've been through - what we've survived. ~ Dannika Dark

Few survivors experience spontaneous recall especially if they have no awareness of the abuse ever happening. Most are forced to endure months or years of fear, confusion, and doubt as their memories surface. Dreams, imagery, feelings, and physical symptoms must be painstakingly faced and pieced together into a meaningful whole that the survivor struggles to accept as reality. ~ Renee Fredrickson

I look upon the gift of my life as a wondrous journey. ~ Maureen Brady

War is most unkind to the memories of survivors ~ Thabo Katlholo

I wasn't going to be the victim. I was going to be a survivor. And I would never let anyone get in the way of my happiness ever again. ~ M. Clarke

For survivors, the word closure often connotes that the bereaved are underachievers who flunked a grief course. ~ Earl A Grollman

Healing isn't just about pain. It's about learning to love yourself. As you move from feeling like a victim to being a proud survivor, you will have glimmers of hope, pride and satisfaction. Those are natural by-products of healing. ~ Ellen Bass

Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can't look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back. ~ Anna Funder

Most of all, he was tired of being a holdout, a sole survivor, the last coconut hanging on the last palm tree on the last little atoll in the path of the great wave of late-modern capitalism, waiting to be hammered flat. ~ Michael Chabon

In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch ~ Bertrand Russell

Each person recovers at their own pace. Healing does not occur with a formula ~ Patricia Dsouza

I'm a survivor. I'll take what life throws at me and figure out a way to catch it with a smile. ~ Anne Malcom

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud ... ~ Anna Akhmatova

I let you die. To save myself, I let you die.
That is the danger in keeping company with survivors. ~ Leigh Bardugo

One of the top challenges is the fact that you are dealing with survivors. Every time you deal with a documentary film subject it is fraught with obvious minefields but when you are dealing with a population that is severely traumatized and trying to recover from that trauma there is an extra level of vigilance and care and attention that has to be implemented all the time at every level. ~ Amy Ziering

My real mother is a survivor, very strong and respected by the people who know her, but our relationship is not easy - but then, it was never going to be. ~ Lemn Sissay

I feel like I have a Ph.D. in life, I'm a survivor. I've not only survived, I've thrived. ~ Gennifer Flowers

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore. ~ Alan Bennett

Our meaning is to make our little planet Earth a better place to live, to stop wars, disarm nuclear missiles, to stop diseases, AIDS, plague, cancer and to stop pollution. ~ Uri Geller

The Great Truth is that women in our society constitute one of the most privileged and powerful classes of human beings on earth. The challenge is to make women believe in their power. "Woman as victim" is an idea whose time has passed. The idea of woman as a survivor and a success must take its place. ~ Wendy McElroy

Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution. ~ Glenn Beck

Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.

But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood――establishing independence and intimacy――burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships.

She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

I'm not a victim. I'm not a survivor. I'm a fighter. ~ JenniferElizabeth Austin

Carmen kicked at the dirt. She couldn't equate finding the virus at home with good luck. It was powerful, this thing, ruthless, a perfectly honed survivor for who knew how many millennia. Perhaps it was old as life itself, a malevolent offshoot of the first sampling of creation. Yet Leigh and Daintith thought they could track it to its lair and swat it like some bothersome insect. ~ Patrick Lynch

If I walked back into the booth in the year 2025, I don't think it would have changed much. I think baseball would be played and managed pretty much the same as it is today. It's a great survivor. ~ Ernie Harwell

We can't conquer the things that are bigger than ourselves; we can't even escape them. It is the wind that decides our destination, far more than ourselves. All that we are able to do is pack our bags, hop on board, raise the anchor and set the sails. We can only trust the wind and go on and on. ~ Meara O'Hara

The sole reason I stand to open it up now is that lots of people who are in pain just like I was, and when they see that there is still hope, they will discover that it is possible to come out of their prison. ~ Patricia Dsouza

It is the burden of the survivor to wake one day and discover in yourself a stranger. ~ John Larison

Like I said - I wasn't stupid. Rough around the edges maybe, definitely a little perverted at times, but never stupid. I was a survivor. I'd damn well survive this. ~ Elle Jasper

'Hibakusha' is an animated docu-drama that Choz Belen and I are directing, and it will take you through the earliest memories of a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor named Kaz Suyeishi. ~ Steve Nguyen

We don't widely accept the idea that bad things happen for uncontrollable reasons because of fear. How could that be? If that is true, we can't make sense of it with our cognitive brains. And that is scary. If that is true, there is no way for us to control those things while in human form. And that is scary. So we search for meaning, a less scary understanding. And we usually end up assuming the victim is to blame. ~ Elisabeth Corey