Survivor Quotes & Sayings

I had a terrible premonition. His flight was to Miami. The old news footage flashed through my mind of Air Florida Flight 90 to Miami that went down in a freezing rain. It showed pieces of the wings and smashed fuselage floating in a huge hole in the ice next to the Fourteenth Street Bridge. A helicopter trying to lift a survivor from the black water. Rescuers watching helplessly from the shore. I tried to call him, but the network was down. I'd seen this fearsome power of the past before, how it can rise up without warning and strike the living with unerring timing. Later Lorenzo called from Miami and said it was a rough flight but they made it. I was happy that for once my intuition was wrong. — J. J. Jorgens

You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from 'Star Search' or 'Survivor' or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people. — Steve Zahn

Psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl, stated, ... man is by no means merely a product of heredity and environment. There is a third element: decision. Man ultimately decides for himself! — Alice A. Kemp

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

The Rochester group [of VOTF], however, was met with some concern as they found it hard to believe my account as it unfolded before them. I feel that some people have a hard time with the truths around us, not only the sexual abuse by priests, but all bad things. I call it chosen ignorance. This modified form of ignorance is found in people who, if confronted with certain truths realize that they have to accept them and thereby acknowledge evil, and that scares them. Opening up and letting the truth in might knock them off their perceived center. It is too hard, period.
(VOTF - Voice of the Faithful - a Catholic group that wants to change the Church, keep the faith.) — Charles L. Bailey Jr.

Bury you with Satan, to hell then I bury ya. I'm like Lucifer the unforgiven, cast out of heaven, I much rather rule in hell than be a servant. A hell on earth survivor means you better be a earner. — Necro

The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure. — Judith Lewis Herman

At his neck, hanging outside his clothing, Demoux wore a necklace that bore a small silver spear: the increasingly popular symbol of the Church of the Survivor. It seemed odd to her that the weapon that killed Kelsier would become the symbol of his followers. — Brandon Sanderson

Jephthah called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, 'Let me cross over,' the men of Gilead asked him, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he replied, 'No,' they said, 'All right, say Shibboleth.' If he said, 'Sibboleth,' because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Fourty-thousand were killed at the time.
- Judges 12:4-6 — Edwidge Danticat

Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text. — James Lovelock

Mr. Gunt, Mr. Neal here is a street survivor. We at the airline are honoring the homeless this year, and it was our airline's privilege and delight to offer him the one remaining business-class seat as a token of our faith in the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. With the full authority of the EU air-system code behind me, I order you back to 67E. — Douglas Coupland

You're looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider. — William Faulkner

So many times after a catastrophe like 9/11, Estonia in Sweden, the Holocaust or whatever, we are so fond of lifting up the hero examples, but actually 99 percent of survivors have done something that they feel very guilty about. — Ruben Ostlund

I'm a man who got out, and moved on. I'm a fucking survivor. - Oliver — Melissa Bender

I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six. — Erin Merryn

I won't waste your time with the injuries of my childhood, with my loneliness, or the fear and sadness of the years I spent inside the bitter capsule of my parents' marriage, under the reign of my father's rage, after all, who isn't a survivor from the wreck of a childhood? I have no desire to describe mine; I only want to say that in order to survive the dark and often terrifying passage of my life I came to believe certain things about myself. — Nicole Krauss

I am a survivor. But I am not unique of the people that survived the great late war. We all have our stories to tell. But for most of us the hardened corners have soften with the passage of time. — Nancy B. Brewer

The rook is a skilled survivor. He is ancient and has inhabited the planet longer than humans. This you can tell from his singing voice: his cry is harsh and grating, made for a more ancient world that existed before the innovation of the pipe, the lute, and the viol. Before music was invented he was taught to sing by the planet itself. He mimicked the great rumble of the sea, the fearsome eruption of volcanoes, the creaking of glaciers, and the geological groaning as the world split apart in its agony and remade itself. — Diane Setterfield

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. — Patrick Ness

The Shrink always warned me that carriers stay wracked with lifelong guilt. It's not an uplifting thing having turned lovers into monsters. We feel bad that we haven't turned into monsters ourselves
survivor's guilt, that's called. And we feel a bit stupid that we didn't notice our own symptoms earlier. I mean, I'd been sort of wondering why the Atkins diet was giving me night vision. But that hadn't seemed like something to worry about ... — Scott Westerfeld

She's a survivor, that one. — Suzanne Collins

That cat doesn't have a lick of sense,' I said, sighing.
Well, honey, he's not right in the head,' Dad said, flipping his cigarette into the front yard.
I glared at him. 'And just what do you mean by that?'
Dad counted on his fingers. 'He's cross-eyed; he jumps out of trees after birds and then doesn't land on his feet; he sleeps with his head smashed up against the wall, and the tip of his tail is crooked.'
Oh yeah? Well, how about this: he once got locked in a basement by evil Petey Scroggs in the middle of January and survived on snow and little frozen mice. When I'm cold at night he sleeps right on my face. Of that whole litter of kittens he came out of he's the only one left. One of his brothers didn't even have a butthole.'
I stand corrected. PeeDink is a survivor. — Haven Kimmel

I haven't talked much about being an ovarian cancer survivor because I don't really want to define myself that way. — Kathy Bates

I get worried sometimes that people are saying 'Why is she on television - is it because of Survivor?' That people are saying, 'She got here the easy way.' But I have been working hard all these years, and I figured I needed to move forward and embrace it, respect it and perfect it. If I didn't, then everybody would lose. — Elisabeth Hasselbeck

The Survivor said that we should smile," the priest pled. "He taught that we should not let our sorrows drag us down no matter how bad life became. — Brandon Sanderson

The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot. — Maya Angelou

After eighty, there are no enemies, only survivors. — David Ben-Gurion

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

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

If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure. — Seth Godin

Elend shook his head. We can survive this. But, the only way that will happen is if our people don't give up. They need leaders who laugh, leaders who feel that this fight can be won. So, this is what I ask of you. I don't care if you're an optimist or a pessimist - I don't care if secretly, you think we'll all be dead before the month ends. On the outside, I want to see you smiling. Do it in defiance, if you have to. If the end does come, I want this group to meet that end smiling. As the Survivor taught us. — Brandon Sanderson

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind. — Anne Sexton

I said 'no' to the 'Born Survivor' producer three times because I've never aspired to be a TV man. — Bear Grylls

It was a catch-22: If you didn't put the trauma behind you, you couldn't move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened. — Jodi Picoult

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

I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day. — Primo Levi

I stand still for a long time, holding the note, and let it all sink in. Her leaving is almost palpable like a gale-force wind that's rolled into my life in the span of a single evening and left behind all this incalculable destruction, both inside and out. Yes, the tempest has passed, but the air around me feels different. I can hardly breathe. Nothing is the same without her. As the lone survivor of her particular storm, I begin to wonder just exactly what I'm supposed to do now. — Katherine Owen

How do you survive the survivor? — Kyo Maclear

Like clocks, recording devices were everywhere embedded; everything was being recorded at every moment, like a huge, infernal Mac Time Machine backup system that created backups of backups regressing into infinity. Who would play these back? Who would pick among them like the survivor of a hideous bombing looking for the rags once worn by his dead and naked mother? — David Cronenberg

My family made it through Hurricane Sandy. We have water, power, and a roof, but the survivor's guilt makes me want to hide. Sneak away from the brilliance of life. It shouts at me: 'Don't enjoy anything too much; people are suffering.' I feel childlike somehow. — Alysia Reiner

People may not realize the damage that they are doing by placing the blame on the victim ~ but that doesn't lessen the damage that they cause by doing it. — Darlene Ouimet

'Survivor' wouldn't have happened had I not gone out there and helped CBS to sell sponsors to finance the first one. Part of my thinking on 'Survivor' was that it should have rewards that are corporate brands. A Big Mac, one thimble-full of Coca-Cola. — Mark Burnett

You should have worn a baby pink t-shirt on which a child sucks his thumb. That would have given you the required juvenile look.

~ Subhangi Tyagi — Kirtida Gautam

Men want a girl who looks like a boy. They want to protect her but she must be a survivor. And she must come ... like a train ... but with ... elegance. — Patrick Marber

Whatever your age, you are the right age to be coming out and telling your truth. Find someone to tell- and tell, tell, tell, until your lungs ache. Tell until you can't tell anymore. It won't take away what happened to you, but it will re-map your life and take away the power from the abuse and the abuser. You are strong and resilient. You are not alone. — Patti Feuereisen

There is no shame in being a survivor of sexual violence. The shame is on the aggressor. — Angelina Jolie

Taking in money, banks were like industrial vacuum cleaners. Giving it out, they were clogged faucets — Dean Koontz

Shooting in Los Angeles is always pleasant and comfortable. Shooting in New York is like being on 'Survivor.' — Bruce Eric Kaplan

When I felt as though I had reached land, it was like I was on a deserted sandy beach, feeling isolated and afraid to share with anyone the memories that haunted me. — Erin Merryn

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

I tried to get a hold of myself. But again in my mind I heard that terrible, terrible scream, the same one that awakens me, bullying its way into my solitary dreams, night after night, the confirmation of guilt. The endless guilt of the survivor. 'Help me, Marcus! Please help me!' It was a desperate appeal in the mountains of a foreign land. It was a scream cried out in the echoing high canyons of one of the loneliest places on earth. It was the nearly unrecognizable cry of a mortally wounded creature. And it was a plea I could not answer. I can't forget it. Because it was made by one of the finest people I ever met, a man who happened to be my best friend. — Marcus Luttrell

For every survivor there is also a rapist. — Janet Bode

There is so much that is still silent between Jaja and me. Perhaps we will talk more with time, or perhaps we never will be able to say it all, to clothe things in words, things that have long been naked. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Who... who are you?"
"I am what you will soon be. I am a survivor. — Brandon Sanderson

He beat me when you not here, I say.
Who do, she say, Albert?
Mr , I say.
I can't believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop.
What he beat you for? she ast.
For being me and not you. — Alice Walker

What a beautiful woman. She moved with grace, she was entirely feminine, and yet, she possessed incredible inner strength. She's a survivor. — Jan Moran

How else could people exist in a world of good and evil, where wicked atrocities abound in backyards, yet somehow still be capable of experiencing joy and love? Surely Darius was not the only survivor of evil, not the only one who longed to see good in the world. He had just focused on the wrong thing, allowing it to consume him. — Madison Thorne Grey

Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as a comment on race relations in America more generally: we are 'roommates' with one another, but how well do we know one another? — Joyce Carol Oates

When we stand, we do so not only for ourselves, but also for countless others who have similar stories but may never have an opportunity to be witnessed. — William Keepin

I've always liked adventure television. Pre-'Survivor,' I did a series on cable called 'Eco-Challenge,' an adventure race with experts mainly, and here we have 'Expedition Impossible.' I like the outdoors and I like doing something fresh for television you haven't seen before. — Mark Burnett

I know it is difficult to believe in your own courage or fortitude when everything inside of you feels weak and shattered. But do not believe what you feel. You will not be easily broken. — Rachel L. Schade

I love you because you have this fire in you that you don't even recognise, but I do. You're strong and you're a survivor. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

You may be operating from the belief that you must do everything yourself because no one will ever be there for you.
Or you may think that if you never speak up you'll avoid being rejected. Both these fears no longer apply to you today as an adult.
If you never reach out for help, you will continue to deprive yourself. — Beverly Engel

Black America "isn't just as fissured as white America; it is more so," wrote Gates. And the mounting intraracial disparities mean that the realities of race no longer affect all blacks in the same way. There have been perverse consequences: in part to assuage our sense of survivor's guilt, we often cloak these differences in a romantic black nationalism - something that has become the veritable socialism of the black bourgeoisie.32 — Jason L. Riley

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

All of us need just one good accomplishment in order to get by. Obviously he can't spend the rest of his life climbing trees, but it's the agility and enterprise involved in the act that will make him a survivor. Enough — Ruskin Bond

All unemployed Jews are sent to labour camps in the countryside. A survivor remembered that "It was like a Russian winter. The snow lay metres deep on the tracks and froze over. To be there made one feel as though one was overwintering in Nova Zemlya."27 — Geert Mak

I figured I'd spend my first thousand years of Hell in some entry-level position, but after that I wanted to move into management. Be a real team player. Hell is going to see enormous growth in market share over the next millennium. I wanted to ride the crest. The agent said that sounded pretty realistic. — Chuck Palahniuk

I'm not playing 'Survivor' when someone I love has cancer. — Jenna Morasca

Once I accepted the fact that I was bad luck, I shied away from group activities. And groups. And activities. I started spending a lot of time in my room, tucked under my covers reading books. There's only so much damage a book can do, and I wasn't worried about hurting myself. Accidentally hurting yourself is way better than hurting other people.
Sure, I got lonely for a while. But getting invited to slumber parties just wasn't worth the stress of wondering if I might accidentally burn down the house with my flat iron or be the only survivor of a freak sleepover massacre. And loneliness is just like everything else - if you endure it long enough, you get used to it. — Paula Stokes

I don't want to be thought of as a survivor because you have to continue getting involved in difficult situations to show off that particular gift, and I'm not interested in doing that anymore. — Carrie Fisher

As the show's executive producer, I envisioned something akin to "Gilligan's Island" meets Lord of the Flies meets Ten Little Indians mets "The Real World." "Survivor" marks a return to a core element of adventure: staying alive. — Mark Burnett

I was the last, the sole survivor. The most honorable thing a survivor could do was survive. If you stayed on your feet, stayed alive, you were the winner. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I shared with Fleur the mysterious self-contempt of the survivor. There were times we hated who we were, and who we had to become, in order not to follow those we loved into the next world. We grew hard. We became impenetrable, sparing of our pity. Sorrows that leveled other people were small to us. We made no move to avoid pain. Sometimes we even welcomed it--we were clumsy with knives, fire, boiling water, steel traps. Pain took our minds off the greater pain that was the mistake that we still existed. — Louise Erdrich

Her mother's quiet disapproval and withdrawal was a death in itself, and Franckline's despair at it was transmitted, she was sure of it, to the child. She transgressed twice, first by making the child, then by giving it her despair, the despair that left it unable to live. — Pamela Erens

Some people wouldn't see a traitor when they looked at me. Some people would see a survivor. Call me anything you like - I sleep fine at night. But you will look at me when you say it. Or I'll get so far in your face you'll be seeing me with your eyes closed. You'll be seeing me in your nightmares. I'll scorch myself on the backs of your eyelids. Get off my back and stay off it. I'm not the woman I used to be. If you want a war with me, you'll get one. Just try me. Give me an excuse to go play in that dark place inside my head. — Karen Marie Moning

As the German expression has it, the last judgement is the youngest day, and it is a day surpassing all days. Not that judgement is reserved for the end of time. On the contrary, justice won't wait; it is to be done at every instant, to be realized all the time, and studied also (it is to be learned). Every just act (are there any?) makes of its day the last day or - as Kafka said - the very last: a dat no longer situated in the ordinary succession of days but one that makes of the most commonplace ordinary, the extraordinary. He who has been the contemporary of the camps if forever a survivor: death will not make him die. — Maurice Blanchot

Yet as bad as she felt, it was nothing compared to the stark despair she saw in Rafferty's eyes. It was so total, and went so deep, that it made her forget her own hurt to see it. It was the look of a man who'd given up deep inside where it mattered most, and for Maggie, who was a survivor to her very toes, it was profoundly disturbing. — Caroline Cross

As survivors, we've been conditioned to be victims sexually. Many of us have never learned to say no or to set limits on our sexual activities ... To heal, it's important that we take control, that we make active choices concerning if, when, and how we want to explore sexuality. Especially in the beginning, you need to put your own needs about sex ahead of anyone else's. — Ellen Bass

I'm a survivor, I said. But I didn't think that claim would carry much weight in an obituary. — Tobias Wolff

I'm never going to give in. I'm never going to give up, and I will fight back with every breath I have.
- Dionne Warner, seven-time cancer survivor and subject of Never Leave Your Wingman — Deana J. Driver

Make each feature work hard to be implemented. Make each feature prove itself and show that it's a survivor. It's like "Fight Club". You should only consider features if they're willing to stand on the porch for three days waiting to be let in.
That's why you start with no. Every feature request that comes in to us - or from us - meets a no. We listen but don't act. The initial response is "not now". If a request for a feature keeps coming back, that's when we know it's time to take a deeper look. Then, and only then, do we start considering the feature for real. — 37 Signals

I'm an 18-years thriver, I call myself, not a survivor, because I feel like I'm in thriving my life even better than I ever have, and I want to encourage other women that are going through this journey that here I am. — Olivia Newton-John

There's a humpback whale in the ocean that sings at fifty-two hertz: too low for any other whale to hear. Scientists aren't sure if it's a genetic anomaly, or a sole survivor of an extinct species, or just a whale who accidentally learnt the wrong song. They just know that it's probably the loneliest mammal on earth. — Holly Smale

Paranoia: the gift of the survivor and the burden of the overtired, stressed, and terrified ... — Patricia Briggs

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

Willow sees her before any of the others. A walking skeleton, the victim of some terrible wasting disease, like something out of the history books, a death camp survivor. It takes Willow a moment to realize that the girl is none of those things. She's just a girl, a girl like Willow, who's chosen to inflict terrible pain on herself. Only this girl's weapon isn't a razor, it's starvation. — Julia Hoban

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

I got a lot of criticism for going back on 'Survivor' to play 'Survivor: All Stars.' — Jenna Morasca

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

With regards pedophilia I have always looked on it as that ... pedophilia. I thought that one religion is no different to the other and I am now truthfully beginning to think that. — Stephen Richards

She wore her scars
as her best attire.
A stunning dress
made of hellfire. — Daniel Saint

There always had to be a survivor. Maybe this simply spoke to the optimism of the men writing those screenplays; even with an uncomfortable sci fi plot they had to subconsciously comfort themselves by thinking that at least a hundred people would survive.
Someone has to survive — Chris Dietzel

Don't you know Im still standing better than I ever did. Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid. I'm still standing after all this time. — Elton John

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was - and am - innocent. The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis — Ellen Bass

The difference between being a victim and a survivor is often a low level of situational awareness. You can't be a super-spy, watchful and paranoid every day. But I am more watchful than the average American. — Barry Eisler

In antiquity, there were three regions in southern Europe: Greece, Rome, and Ilyria. Albanian is the only survivor of the Ilyrian languages. That is why it has always intrigued the great linguists of the past. — Ismail Kadare

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

It is through victims such as myself who still have a voice that the world will change to be a better place. — Catherine Jane Fisher

Humans are a great survivor species but our survival will be pretty grim if all of the plants and animals we depend on die out. That's why any human survival strategy has to include a plan to maintain our environment roughly in the state that it's in now. — Annalee Newitz