Liz Murray Quotes & Sayings

Homeless person or business person, doctor or teacher, whatever your background may be, the same holds true for each of us: life takes on the meaning that you give it. — Liz Murray

Life has a way of doing that; one minute everything makes sense, the next, things change. People get sick. Families break apart, your friends could close the door on you. — Liz Murray

I've learned in my life that you really don't know what's possible until you're already doing it. — Liz Murray

All around us, people were cool. By association, so were we. — Liz Murray

I'd been living on the streets of New York, and I was sleeping at my friends' houses, sometimes in the subway. — Liz Murray

Sleeping in a hallway around Bedford Park later that week, I took out my blank transcripts and filled in the grades I wanted, making neat little columns of A's. If I could picture it - if I could take out these transcripts and look at them - then it was almost as if the A's had already happened. Day by day, I was just catching up with what was already real. My future A's, in my heart, had already occurred. Now I just had to get to them. — Liz Murray

In the years ahead of me, I learned that the world is actually filled with people ready to tell you how likely something is, and what it means to be realistic. But what I have also learned is that no one, no one truly knows what is possible until they go and do it. — Liz Murray

The lesson that people can't give me what they don't have, and if there's anything I took from it, it was: okay, I don't really expect anyone to hand me anything. There's going to be me and the world. — Liz Murray

But avoidance allows you to believe that you're making all kinds of strides when you're not. — Liz Murray

There's always a way through things if you work hard enough and look close. It all depends on your level of determination. — Liz Murray

Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never. — Liz Murray

We would be in each other's lives again. No, he hadn't been the best father, but he was my father, and we loved each other. We needed each other. Though he'd disappointed me countless times through the years, life had already proven too short for me to hold on to that. So I let go of my hurt. I let go years of frustration between us. Most of all, I let go of any desire to change my father and I accepted him for who he was. I took all of my anguish and released it like a fistful of helium balloons to the sky, and I chose to forgive him. — Liz Murray

Ma was legally blind due to a degenerative eye disease she'd had since birth. This meant she was entitled to welfare, and our lives revolved around the first day of every month when her payment was due. — Liz Murray

One point of view gives a one dimensional world. — Liz Murray

If I want to be a loving, generous, giving person, I'm not going to test the waters. I'm simply going to be a loving, generous, giving person. — Liz Murray

Instead, what I was beginning to understand was that however things unfolded from here on, whatever the next chapter was, my life could never be the sum of one circumstance. It would be determined, as it had always been, by my willingness to put one foot in front of the other, moving forward, come what may. — Liz Murray

I have just one black and white photograph left of my mother when she was younger. She was 17 when it was taken and beautiful with wispy curls and eyes that shone like dark marbles. — Liz Murray

I was inspired by a question that kept repeating itself in my mind: Could I really change my life? I'd spent so many days, weeks, months, and years thinking about doing things with my life, and now I wanted to know, if I committed to a goal and woke up every single day working hard at it, could I change my life? — Liz Murray

When I grew up in the Bronx, we always had everyone telling us, 'Watch out for the system, watch out for child welfare, watch out, they'll get you,' and I grew up with this feeling of, 'Society is over there and they're dangerous and not safe.' — Liz Murray

I feel like my life has been a series of miracles. I was in every sense a lost cause. — Liz Murray

Making these choices, as it turned out, wasn't about willpower. I always admired people who "willed" themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn't, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me. — Liz Murray

Shortly after I turned 13, Child Welfare took me into care. I was sent to a residential centre where girls with behavioural problems were 'evaluated'. My time there comes back to me now only in flashes of smells, images and sounds. — Liz Murray

Success creates opportunities for other people. — Liz Murray

When you go back to your environment and you deal with employees ... do you inspire people or do you make them feel fear? Do you make them feel confident or incompetent? I think that distinction really marks the leader. — Liz Murray

After all, isn't that what really draws the line between childhood and adulthood, knowing that you are solely responsible for yourself? If so, then my childhood ended at fifteen. — Liz Murray

That's when I realized that sex was not necessarily a shared thing. Sex was something you do with someone else, yet you can experience it separately from each other. It didn't necessarily bring you closer. In fact, it could highlight the parts of you that feel most separate. Sex could reveal to you your own isolation. Sam had told me that this act added up to love, but I did not feel loved by Carlos then, nor, in that moment, could I feel my love for him. — Liz Murray

This was the environment in which I finally came to my education, the environment in which I knew I could no longer lie in bed and give up. How could I pull the blanket back over my head when I knew my teachers were waiting for me? When they were willing to work so hard, how could I not do the same? — Liz Murray

Your potential in this world is timeless — Liz Murray

In our family, if you said the words 'I feel,' they better be followed with 'hungry' or 'cold'. Because we didn't get personal, that's just how it was. — Liz Murray

My mother used to sit at the foot of my bed, and she would share her dreams with me. — Liz Murray

You are bigger than your circumstances. — Liz Murray

But I know I didn't love school for school's sake. I had never really been what people call an 'academic' person, nor did I see myself becoming one. Instead, I took pleasure in the fact that my work existed in a social setting, one that was based on the promise of a brighter future. I knew that what I adored about school was that each of my assignments - readings, essays, or in-class presentations - was inseparable from my relationships [ ... ] If I loved school at all, I loved it for what it provided me access to: bonds with people I grew to cherish. And nothing was better than working toward my dreams alongside people I loved who were doing the same. — Liz Murray

Dream, but don't sleep. — Liz Murray

As well as being blind, Ma turned out to have the same mental illness that her mother had had. Between 1986 and 1990, she suffered six schizophrenic bouts, each requiring her to be institutionalised for up to three months. — Liz Murray

If I had a magic wand, I would live in a building in New York, big enough so my friends, my family could all have apartments in it. We'd raise our kids in the same space and have backyard barbecues and get old and fat together. — Liz Murray

Anything that is within someone else's reach is also within yours. Set your goals no matter how impossible they may seem. Then focus on what is between you and that goal. And then, simply take out the obstacles as they come. — Liz Murray

I said to myself: what if I woke up, and every single day I did everything within my ability during that day to change my life. What could happen in just a month? A year? — Liz Murray

Many nights, I longed for home. But it occurred to me as I struggled for a feeling of comfort and safety: I have no idea where home is. — Liz Murray

This fork in the road happens over a hundred times a day, and it's the choices that you make that will determine the shape of your life. — Liz Murray

I had a calling inside of me. I had a sense that when I was going through experiences like living on the streets, losing my parents to AIDS, just having my whole world turned upside-down, there was this feeling inside of me like I was meant for something greater. — Liz Murray

I knew at that moment I had to make a choice ... I could submit to everything and live a life of excuses, or I could push myself ... I could push myself and make my life good ... — Liz Murray