Survivor Syndrome 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

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

Consider also the special word they used: survivor. Something new. As long as they didn't have to say human being. It used to be refugee, but by now there was no such creature, no more refugees, only survivors. A name like a number
counted apart from the ordinary swarm. Blue digits on the arm, what difference? They don't call you a woman anyhow. Survivor. Even when your bones get melted into the grains of the earth, still they'll forget human being. Survivor and survivor and survivor; always and always. Who made up these words, parasites on the throat of suffering! ~ Cynthia Ozick

Rhiannon's Law #14: There is a reason the truth hurts. When you cease to feel the sting, it means you've stopped caring. And damn, wouldn't that be a total fucking waste? ~ J.A. Saare

I wanted to go to a few therapy sessions and be back to normal. As I saw it, the panic attacks were the problem. What I really wanted was to stop having them. I genuinely thought I could do that. I didn't want to think about the past. ~ Olga Trujillo

My mom, she's a breast cancer survivor and because of that I had started getting mammograms once a year, starting at age 30. ~ Kate Walsh

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

She'd lost so much in the process of becoming Zyne, but somewhere in the middle of it all, she'd found herself. Her heritage had shattered her illusions of a tranquil life. Destiny swept behind in a blaze, decimating everything she tried to hold on to. She was left alone, like the solitary tree standing after a forest fire. She'd thought she would crumble to ash, just another memory on the wind. But as blackened pieces of her cracked and fell away, she saw the truth. Under all that charred wreckage was the heartwood. Bruised. Scarred. But still good. Still capable of growth. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a victim, but a survivor. ~ Gwen Mitchell

A terrible sadness threatened to overwhelm me as I wondered how two people capable of such love for each other had eventually felt so little for the child they had produced between them. ~ Toni Maguire

I truly believe that the death of my mother has made me the way I am today. I am a survivor, mentally strong, determined, stronwilled, self-reliant, and independent. I also keep most of my pain, anger and feelings inside. I refuse to be vulnerable to anyone, especially my husband. The only people who see that more emotional or softer side are my children. That too because of my mother. ~ Hope Edelman

Please don't look at our scarlet A's and write us off. Look us in the eye, talk directly to us. Don't panic or take it personally if we make mistakes, because we will. We will repeat ourselves, we will misplace things, and we will get lost. We will forget your name and what you said two minutes ago. We will also try our hardest to compensate for and overcome our cognitive losses. ~ Lisa Genova

I think that for example as a prisoner of course I was pressured to become very submissive and in a way the syndrome of Stockholm is when you shift position and then you become like you're supposed to act, which is accepting the authority of those who have abducted you. ~ Ingrid Betancourt

Ava Elizabeth Baker you make yourself a survivor, not a victim. Become an exception and not a rule. ~ Nicole Gulla

Children are naive, they don't possess enough skills to be able to recognize the balance between the truth and a lie. ~ Patricia Dsouza

My first impression of [Patricia Highsmith] was a loneliness, a sadness in one so young (we were both in our early thirties) with absolutely no sense of joy or balance. Gauche to an extreme, really physically clumsy as well as boyish, it was almost impossible to put her at ease. It was as if she felt a deep distrust of everything. ~ Patricia Schartle

You might think the Bangkok Hilton (the nickname of a fictional prison in Bangkok) was tough, well that was paradise compared to this place! ~ Stephen Richards

If I could, I would ask the world to make me skates so that I could find its frozen water and set myself free to smile, laugh, dance and cheer.

I'd see the boundaries that would be in a world frozen in its place and they would keep me safe, away from where the waters warm, away from the stares, away from the thoughts that melt and tear.

I would ask the world to skate with me, looking at the gladness I had found, knowing, really knowing, there was nothing left to fear.

I think then we would be free to live life as we could, with more in common than apart, the fog would lift, the confusion would end and true understanding would hold us dear. ~ Liane Holliday Willey

When my face was slashed, my dad held me on his lap in the car to the hospital, applying direct pressure with the swift calm of a veteran and an ex-fireman. I looked up and asked him, "Am I going to die?" "Don't speak," he said. So, yeah, he's not the kind of guy who wants to watch people eat bugs on Survivor. It's so clear to me how those two things are related. ~ Tina Fey

Statism is a mental disorder, much akin to Stockholm Syndrome. ~ Dane Whalen

After a moment, Amelia heard Rick humming as he marched down the ramp. It was a familiar tune. She raised a curious brow as she listened to him and then it dawned on her.
"Singing in the Rain!" she exclaimed. "How do you know that song?"
He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. "I had sisters. Remember?" And with that statement, he burst into song: "I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain. What a glorious feeling'! I'm happy again. ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

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

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

Her wounds brought her a great source of power because they lived in the same place as her heart. ~ Shannon L. Alder

With the WWF's clout in the PPV arena already entrenched, McMahon saw an opening. He told cable providers that he was going to air his own show - the Survivor Series - that night, and if any of them showed Starrcade instead, he wouldn't let them show WrestleMania IV. (Some retellings say that McMahon threatened that they'd never do business with the WWF again at all.) The cable companies by and large assented to McMahon's power grab, and the NWA took a huge financial hit. ~ David Shoemaker

What is the future of men who have
lost sight of the past?


Earl Hollsopple lived on the edge of civilization in a deserted shack for nearly forty years. His life was one beautiful night of stargazing after another, until a helicopter flies overhead, and exposing his meager world. It is a sign; it is time for him to return to civilization.

Unknowingly, Earl's journey parallels another he had deeply repressed, and that is his return from the Vietnam War. The lone survivor of a plane crash, Earl waits for rescue that never came. He is left to find his way home alone.

On both his quests, old Earl and young Earl learn lessons of survival, overcoming isolation and handling conflicts; his travels teach him not just about himself, but humankind. Reaching pivotal points in both journeys, Earl meets fateful loves, leading to destinies that are ultimately intertwined.

Everything in life circles until we are able to answer the riddles that plaque man and humanity. Only until we take the journey, solve the problems of our own existence, do we find our way home. ~ Jennifer Ott

Cletus takes a sizeable gulp from the bottle, then points at Arden. You'd learn something from that one, boy. She's a hard worker. A survivor. Gets things done. That girl doesn't know it, but she's going places in life. ~ Anna Banks

Some authors have conceptualized depression as a "depletion syndrome" because of the prominence of fatigability; they postulate that the patient exhausts his available energy during the period prior to the onset of the depression and that the depressed state represents a kind of hibernation, during which the patient gradually builds up a new story of energy. ~ Aaron T. Beck

In the early 1990s, a group of people accused of sexual abuse formed the 'False Memory Syndrome Foundation' (FMSF). The FMSF's primary goal was to advocate on behalf of parents accused of child sexual abuse by their adult children, but the Foundation also became an important resource for people accused of sexual abuse by minors. Importantly, the Foundation attracted academics from a range of discliplines whose experise had been contested or challenged by the legitimisation of children's and women's testimony of sexual abuse. ~ Michael Salter

ODTAA syndrome: the syndrome of One Damn Thing After Another. ~ Atul Gawande

Lots of people with little kids or babies with Down syndrome tell me they aren't afraid of the future for their child because of what I am doing to help people understand it better. ~ Lauren Potter

Denial forces victims to retreat in lifeless existence, dieing in the shadows of buried trauma and painful memories. ~ Trudy Metzger

The first thing you need to know if you are a survivor is that parts of you have probably been trained to create a variety of symptoms and behaviours. Abusers actually train child parts to cut the body, to make other parts cut, to attempt suicide, to create flashbacks by releasing pieces of visual or auditory memories, to create body memories of pain or electroshock, and to create depression, terror, anxiety, and despair by releasing the emotional components of memories to the rest of the personality system. The front person and most of the rest of the system do not know that this is the source of these feelings and behaviours. p126 ~ Alison Miller

Adolescence is a twentieth-century invention most parents approach with dread and look back on with the relief of survivors. ~ Faye Moskowitz

If I'm convinced that I'm not good enough, I will have a difficult time accepting someone into my life who thinks I am. It's the Groucho Marx syndrome of not wanting to like anyone who would want me in their club. The only way that I can accept someone's finding me wonderful, is if I find myself wonderful. But to the ego, self-acceptance is death. ~ Marianne Williamson

It(Boston Bombings) was worth it to hear you(survivor speakers) speak. ~ Joe Biden

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'm happy being me, you will just have to get over it. ~ Tina J. Richardson

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

Had I not been dissociative, I never would have survived. ~ Wendy Hoffman

One thing I'd learned growing up was that no matter who claimed you, you had to first claim yourself. ~ Ridley Pearson

She very nearly reached for his hand, but curled her fingers into a fist instead. He wouldn't appreciate her pity, and how did you pity a man who'd survived hell? You didn't pity him. You admired him. ~ Maya Banks