Survivor Of Life Quotes & Sayings

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

Yet the press was still the last resource of the educated poor who could not be artists and would not be tutors. Any man who was fit for nothing else could write an editorial or a criticism. The enormous mass of misinformation accumulated in ten years of nomad life could always be worked off on a helpless public, in diluted doses, if one could but secure a table in the corner of a newspaper office. The press was an inferior pulpit; an anonymous schoolmaster; a cheap boarding-school but it was still the nearest approach to a career for the literary survivor of a wrecked education. — Henry Adams

I do not subscribe to the abuse "victim" or "survivor" labelling mentality. I have experienced every kind of abuse imaginable and I am and always have been the most happy-go-lucky, positive and life affirming person around. Your labels do not serve you, so don't use them as an excuse to be miserable. You have a beautiful life to live, so accept the beauty and start living. — Miya Yamanouchi

Don't say that," he said harshly. Rowan studied Lily for a long time. "Do you know what it means to be a survivor? It means that not only do you have to live through things, you have to live with them as well. The second part is much harder and sometimes it takes the rest of your life to learn how to do it. But at least you have the rest of your life, Lily. And that's what's important to me."
"Oh, I'm alive," she said ruefully, "Even if I am damaged."
"You'll heal," Rowan replied confidently. — Josephine Angelini

Though I can't change what happened, I can choose how to react. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up. — Tori Amos

Letter to Myself, in Remission, from Myself, Terminal"

You'll come to hate your own poems,
read them as pretty wisps of colorful thinking,
all those images just a splash of colored oil
sloshed over a pool gone rancid. Admit it.
Atheists always scared you. And no wonder.
Those nights you switched on the fan so no one
could hear you scream into your pillow, weeping
and biting your own hands like a motherless
monkey,banded to a body that despised you,
a suit of coals with a jammed-shut zipper.
Instead of the truth, you took refuge in stories
and souls, wore the word survivor like a pink nimbus.
All the while, my dear, I waited, knowing
you'd catch up to me one day. I'm holding the black-
backed mirror to your face. Look into it. — Anya Krugovoy Silver

Do you know what it means to be a survivor? It means that not only do you have to live through things, you have to live with them as well. The second part is much harder and sometimes it takes the rest of your life to learn how to do it. But at least you have the rest of your life ... — Josephine Angelini

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

I want everyone that has been abused by someone in their childhood to know that you can get past it. Having DID is not the end of the world; it's the beginning of your new life. DID allows the victim of exceptional abuse the ability to "forget" the abuse and continue living. Without it, I may have gone crazy as a teen and spent my life in a as a teen and spent my life in a psychiatric hospital. — Dauna Cole

My hand-stitched wings itch
to take flight
to test the winds of change
that inevitably blow
at the end
of a cycle. — B.G. Bowers

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

I can sit in denial of my life because in looking around I see how lucky I am to have survived it. — K. Farrell St. Germain

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

God saved my life miraculously...when I was shot by armed robber. I am a survivor! I am thankful to God for the gift of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

All men have a measure of cowardice in them. I learned that love of one's mates can overcome your fears. I learned that every survivor of this horror must try to live a good life because he lives for many men. — Leon Uris

I'm a survivor of life. I try to give the glory to God and appreciate what's happening to me. — Mike Epps

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

As I explored my soul, now I know I have survived schizophrenia; hearing voices, reduced social engagement, emotional expression and lack of motivation. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Every day I wake up is a day I've fought for. Every mistake, every laugh, every tear, and every sunrise; I've earned through the years of abuse and pain. I carry those memories with me as a reminder of who I am and what's truly worth fighting for. And if you aren't able to see that, I'm afraid your soul searching talents are highly suspect. — Kristen Day

I have suffered pains and torture of all natures. I have heard many say, "I am a survivor." I am not in a boat in a sea of torture awaiting to be rescued. I am a Conqueror, I am a Victor ...
I am one with myself.
I AM FREE! — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and the author of Man's Search for Meaning, wrote that human beings create meaning in three ways: thought their work, though their relationships, and by how they choose to meet unavoidable suffering. Every life brings hardship and trial, and every life also offers deep possibilities for meaningful work and love ... I've learned that courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin. — Eric Greitens

Above all, one could hold onto everything: the suffering to the quick and its whims, the sticky shadows, somber viscosity of the veil drawn taut around cities, everything could be borne, since legal outings of a few hours might take place, I told myself. Of course, I thought, no point pretending one wasn't dead. But on the other hand, rather than yield to the maneuvers of the conservation instinct, strategies that make us flee the pain within by hiding from ourselves within ourselves from whom we flee, its poppies, its hypnotic operations that the powerful currents of day-to-day life reinforce with a thousand vulgar, pressing duties which turn us from our hearts.
do everything, I thought, on the contrary, whatever you can to resist the ingenious temptations of compromises, cling to the suffering, stir up the dread, for the monsters are also the benevolent guardians of the survivor's presence within me — Helene Cixous

I watched the first episode of 'Survivor' in the spring of 2000, thinking I would hate it. My natural inclination steers me toward the indoors not only in my actual life but also in the settings of the entertainment I read and watch. — Andrea Seigel

Some of the most challenging work a suicide survivor can do is to pray. To pray fully, survivors must bring all of themselves to the prayer: their anger, disappointment, fears, insecurities, and why's. I bring all of me into an encounter with God, aware that nothing in the human experience, or the human response to the ambushes of life, is alien to God. — Harold Ivan Smith

As for my faith: I've become my father's son-that is, I've become the kind of believer that Pastor Merrill used to be. Doubt one minute, faith the next-sometimes inspired, sometimes in despair. Canon Campbell taught me to ask myself a question when the latter state settles upon me. Whom do I know who's alive whom I love? Good question-one that can bring you back to life. These days, I love Dan Needham and the Rev. Katherine Keeling; I know I love them because I worry about them-Dan should lose some weight, Katherine should gain some! What I feel for Hester isn't exactly love; I admire her-she's certainly been a more heroic survivor than I've been, and her kind of survival is admirable. And then there are those distant, family ties that pass for love-I'm talking about Noah and Simon, about Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred. I look forward to seeing them every Christmas. — John Irving

As modern neurobiologists point out, the repetition of the traumatic experience in the flashbacks can be itself re-traumatizing; if not life-threatening, it is at least threatening to the chemical structure of the brain and can ultimately lead to deterioration. And this would also seem to explain the high suicide rate of survivor, for example, survivors of Vietnam. — Cathy Caruth

As a cancer survivor, I am very aware of how many wasted minutes I don't have. The surest way to waste what is left of your life is to worry about what might happen or what might have been. — Shelley Hamlin

Breaking free is only the beginning. Then begins the painful process of reversing the indoctrination. The longer someone stays in a cult the harder it is for them to remember who they were before the cult took control of their mind. Or in the case of someone like me, a cult-born child, my entire personality was made and created by them. When I left I had no idea who I was. My whole existence, everything I thought I knew, had been a lie.

But it is the psychological aftermath of life in a cult that is all too often the silent killer. — Natacha Tormey

Here, from her ashes you lay. A broken girl so lost in despondency that you know that even if she does find her way out of this labyrinth in hell, that she will never see, feel, taste, or touch life the same again. — Amanda Steele

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

So when life breaks you pick up the pieces and keep moving. Otherwise, you stay broken. And instead of being a survivor, you're always a victim. — Elizabeth Hunter

Although the ending was more John Carpenter than John Updike, Carroll hadn't come across anything like it in any of the horror magazines, either, not lately. It was, for twenty-five pages, the almost completely naturalistic story of a woman being destroyed a little at a time by the steady wear of survivor's guilt. It concerned itself with tortured family relationships, shitty jobs, the struggle for money. Carroll had forgotten what it was like to come across the bread of everyday life in a short story. Most horror fiction didn't bother with anything except rare bleeding meat. ("Best New Horror") — Joe Hill

As I faced each tragedy in my life, I learned to reach into the depth of my soul for strength and determination. Through this healing process, I discovered perseverance and resilience. I could not go into the past and use White-Out to erase any events; instead, I had to find a way to use my pain to help me heal and grow. I had to stare darkness in the face and accept that I could not change the past, but I could build a better future. — Erin Merryn

The past is gone. My life is a miracle! With gratitude to God, I am still here to remember and to tell what happened to me during the Holocaust of WWII. — Leah Cik Roth

As I turned over the last page, a wave of sorrow enveloped me. Where had they all gone, these people who had seemed so real? To distract myself, I walked out into the night; instinctively, I lit a cigarette. In the dark, the cigarette glowed, like a fire lit by a survivor. But who would see this light, this small dot among infinite stars? I stood awhile in the dark, the cigarette glowing and growing small, each breath patiently destroying me. How small it was, how brief. Brief, brief, but inside me now, which the stars could never be. — Louise Gluck

When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the icecap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole ... when all the cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, the sole survivor of animal life on this our earth - a melancholy bug. — William Jacob Holland

We will not die cornered and cowering in the ruins of a dead city. — Rachel L. Schade

Stephanie had been raped, beaten and left for dead on the Atlantic City Boardwalk several times. You'd think she would have hit rock bottom after those experiences. But no. None of that made her quit. It just made her want to use even more drugs, to forget her miserable life. As long as she could get high, she didn't care if she was being raped in a dark alley. At this point in her life, a lethal overdose probably would have felt like her salvation. — Oliver Markus

You don't want to return to the life you had before Stanford, and you don't know if you can remain in this life any longer, but fear should never be the reason why you change. If you're only here because you're afraid of the old way of life, you'll never pay attention and open your soul to learn about the new way. You'll be too busy looking back over your shoulder to make sure the old life isn't creeping up on you. — Anais Torres

To heal from child sexual abuse you must believe that you were a victim, that the abuse really did take place. This is often difficult for survivors. When you've spent your life denying the reality of your abuse, when you don't want it to be true, or when your family repeatedly calls you crazy or a liar, it can be hard to remain firm in the knowledge that you were abused. — Ellen Bass

It was like being a prisoner on death row who survives month after month and becomes accustomed to the life, while he registers with an objective eye the horror of the new arrivals: registers it with the same numbness tha he brings to the murders and deaths themselves. All survivor literature talks about this numbness, in which life's functions are reduced to minimum, behavior becomes completely selfish and indifferent to others, and gassing and burning are everyday occurences. In the rare accounts by perpetrators , too, the gas chambers and ovens become ordinary scenary, the perpetrators reduced to their few functions and exhibiting a mental paralysis and indifference, a dullness that makes them seem drugged or drunk. — Bernhard Schlink

It's weird, I was such a survivor and so wanted to be a part of life while I was trying to snuff out the life that was inside of me. I had this duality of trying to kill myself with drugs, then eating really good food and exercising and going swimming and trying to be a part of life. I was always going back and forth on some level. — Anthony Kiedis

Being a survivor doesn't mean being strong - it's telling people when you need a meal or a ride, company, whatever. It's paying attention to heart wisdom, feelings, not living a role, but having a unique, authentic life, having something to contribute, finding time to love and laugh. All these things are qualities of survivors. — Bernie Siegel

In Notes of a Jazz Survivor, a documentary about his drug- and jail-ravaged life, Art Pepper and his wife, Laurie, listen to his recording of "Our Song." The entry of the saxophone, Pepper explains, is "like the most subtle hello." Ramamani's voice is the response to this call; it is Laurie's hand reaching for her husband's as they listen. Ramamani tells us not only what it is like to love, but also what it is like to be loved. When I hear her voice, darling, I feel your hand in mine. — Geoff Dyer

Or, God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivor's Club wasn't something you "earned," but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother's womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: the nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people's, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains ... At the core, it was all the same. — J.R. Ward

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them ... — Annie Dillard

You are a survivor, and as that unwelcome designation implies, your survival - your emotional survival - will depend on how well you learn to cope with your tragedy. The bad new: Surviving this will be the second worst experience of your life. The good news: The worst is already over. — Jennifer Niven

I loved rhubarb, that hardy, underappreciated garden survivor that leafed out just as the worst of winter melted away. Not everyone was a fan, especially of the bitter, mushy, overcooked version. Yet sometimes a little bitterness could bring out the best in other flavors. Bitter rhubarb made sunny-day strawberry face the realities of life- and taste all the better for it. As I brushed the cakes with a deep pink glaze made from sweet strawberry and bottled rhubarb bitters, I hoped I would change rhubarb doubters. Certainly, the little Bundt cakes looked as irresistible as anything I had ever seen in a French patisserie. — Judith Fertig

There's another way to edit the sentence, which is to add a comma before the second 'which.' The survivor is struggling toward 'some resolution,' not a specific resolution that the mind may never find. The final clause is an appended thought, not a conclusion of the previous clause: 'Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some resolution, which it may never find.' — Robert Anderson

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

Historical context apart, Klemperer's journals can be read for their own sake as a gnawing meditation on the disappointments of life and the irrevocability of choices. He is intensely aware at all moments, perhaps because of his consciousness of being a "survivor," that death is only a breath away. He is one of the great kvetches of all time, endlessly recording aches and pains, bad dreams, shortages of food and medicine, snubs and humiliations. And, like everyone else, he wants everything both ways. In — Christopher Hitchens

Maybe that is the greatest of wonders: that we can be shaped so much by those we've known closely, and equally by those we've never known at all - and that we too can change the world long after we've left it. — Jacob M. Appel

What we now need to see is that human life doesn't need to be rescued from a fall that didn't happen. Human life needs to be empowered. We have to begin to see the work of God as expanding the humanity of people so that they do not have to relate to one another out of the survivor mentality of fallen people. — John Shelby Spong

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

My mother is a survivor who's had a lot of things happen in her life that have been very trying. — Michael C. Hall

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

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

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

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

The more power they have over your emotions, the less likely you'll trust your own reality and the truth about the abuse you're enduring. Knowing the manipulative tactics and how they work to erode your sense of self can arm you with the knowledge of what you're facing and at the very least, develop a plan to retain control over your own life and away from toxic people. . . . Taking back our control and power . . . means seeking validating professional help for the abuse we've suffered, detaching from these people in our lives, learning more about the techniques of abusers, finding support networks, sharing our story to raise awareness, and finding appropriate healing modalities that can enable us to transcend and thrive after their abuse. — Shahida Arabi

Another question I am frequently asked is, "What do you mean by recovery?" It has taken me a while to answer that one. I had been depending on other people's definitions of recovery until I developed one that worked for me (just as you must come to one that makes sense for you.) Mine is simple. For me, it is about freedom.
Recovery is the freedom to make choices in your life that aren't determined by the abuse.
The specific choices will be different for each of you; the freedom to choose is your birthright. — Mike Lew

Your mind always follows your heart. That will never change. The one good thing about you is that you are a survivor. You can survive and get out of any situation. The bad part about it is that in the process you always unintentionally hurt others as well as yourself. Did you ever ask yourself how long you will be able to go this way? Whatever you are after in your life, is it worth it? — Stevan V. Nikolic

Endurance of life problems, spirit of survival. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Life itself will protect you. You will graduate to living a better life than you have ever lived till now! Your treatment and patience has paid off! You are life's own student and have seen life from all the angles. You have come full circle and now it is time to rejoice. Say you are absolutely fine and it will be granted to you! — Sanchita Pandey

Whenever I talk to survivors [of a domestic abuse relationship] who have lived through that and are on the other side and their whole perspective on life is a complete 180, I'm just so inspired. — Kerry Washington

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

From the perspective of archetypal psychology, the survivor-perpetrator gains a unique vantage point on life. The devastation of the patient's early life is juxtaposed with possession of a rare possibility of transforming his or her relationship to self, spirituality, and the human community in a way that non-traumatized individuals may never attain. — Harvey L. Schwartz

I was keenly conscious of the comrades-in-arms who had fallen with me. A bond surpassing by a hundredfold that which I had known in life bound me to them. I felt a sense of inexpressible relief and realized that I had feared, more than death, separation from them. I apprehended that excruciating war survivor's torment, the sense of isolation and self-betrayal experienced by those who had elected to cling yet to breath when their comrades had let loose their grip. — Steven Pressfield

He looked him right in the eyes and saw a man who was great and good and human, who had done extraordinary things and terrible things and been broken and reassembled as a shell, only then to do the bravest thing of all: He had kept on living, though there are easier paths to take. — Laini Taylor

Hope starts as a promise made to yourself, the first drop of rain in a parched land, the first step onto dry earth for a shipwreck survivor. It is a listening crowd for a lonely heart.
What we hope in must be greater than us; therefore, we will always need something greater than man to believe in. Good and evil may be a necessity to perceive our world, but hope is a prerequisite for life. — Christopher Hawke

Health is real wealth and peace of mind is real happiness. Plant seeds which will bear colorful flowers and make the garden of your life bloom with their fragrance. — Sanchita Pandey

How can you make light of it? I says.
What should I do? She says. Cry fer the rest of my life? Molly of the Many Sorrows? ... You got battle scars. This is mine, she says. You know what it tells me? I'm a survivor. — Moira Young

She hadn't been Rachel that night. She was evidence, a body of things to be picked and probed at, pictured and asked about, recorded and quoted. I want my life back. The voice was faint inside her own mind. She could hear the plaintive, almost despairing note to that voice. Like the wail of a scared child, this wasn't just about facing her fears. This was about everything. Her injuries, the loss of the life and world she'd once taken for granted, her long recovery. — Anais Torres

The power we discover inside ourselves as we survive a life-threatening experience can be utilized equally well outside of crisis, too. I am, in every moment, capable of mustering the strength to survive again - or of tapping that strength in other good, productive, healthy ways. — Michele Rosenthal

She is the sun that shines on my path, chasing away any shadows. She is the laughter that fills up the gaping holes, without which I would be a basket case. She is the reason why I love my job. The best part of my day is drinking a coffee, eating a chocolate treat and listening to great music, while sitting with Genevieve Cain. She appreciates life, she grasps it and makes it what she wants. Sure, she's hit a few bumps recently, what with her loser ex, but Gen's a survivor. And not just any survivor, she's a survivor with dignity and pride. — Nicola Claire

Happiness and sorrow are two sides of the same coin called life. Whatever befalls you, walk on unattached. — Sanchita Pandey

This man was no pampered gentleman, born to a life of softness. No, this man was a brawler, a scrapper, a street fighter. A survivor. — V.E. Lynne

In the uneven balance of life, I'd experienced love and loss. The loss challenged me to be strong, but it was the love that supported me when I was weak. I was a survivor. — Rebecca Donovan

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

I know you're in a world of pain, but that pain will lessen. At the beginning you can't see that. You can only see your pain and you think it will never go away.
But the nature of pain is that it changes - it changes like a sunset. At first, it's this intense red-orange in the sky, and then it starts getting softer and soften. The texture of pain changes as you work through it. And then one day, you wake up and realize that life isn't just about working through your incest; it's about living, too.
- survivor of child sexual abuse — Ellen Bass

There's something about the amount of time that has gone by that makes her feel like a survivor. There's something in the way that following her heart, despite it being perpetually broken, has made her feel like a success. And something about letting go of pain and letting love in has made her feel happy again. — Tessa Shaffer

Aly Ron Sunday Daoud, you are the sun that shines on my path, chasing away any shadows. You are the laughter that fills up my gaping holes, without which I would be a basket case. You are the reason why I love my life. The best part of my day is drinking a coffee, eating a chocolate treat and listening to great music, while sitting in a couch of Lahore Gymkhana Club. You appreciate life, you grasps it and make it what you want within my heart. Sure, you hit a few bumps recently, what with your loser ex, but a survivor. And not just any survivor, but your's survivor with dignity and pride, still loving you my sweetest ex. — Abdul'Rauf Hashmi

In fact, the question has haunted me for a long time: Does life have meaning after Auschwitz? In a universe cursed because it is guilty, is hope still possible? For a young survivor whose knowledge of life and death surpasses that of his elders, wouldn't suicide be as great a temptation as love or faith? — Elie Wiesel

Be an empowertarian. A person who empowers their own life and that of others. — Catherine Jane Fisher

I have a lot of survivor insticts, and I know when to quit. I know when to go forward it my life, but not everybody does. — Meredith Brooks

Be wary of feeling as through there is not enough room at the table. Oftentimes a female Chinese-American might feel as through she is in competition with another Chinese-American woman writer of the same generation. A writer friend of mine calls it the "There Can Only Be One ... " syndrome. This isn't "Survivor." The more good writers, of all walks of life and all ethnicities and persuasions, the better. — ZZ Packer

By opening the door to my life, it is my hope and mission to shed light on the hidden wounds of abuse, to end the stigma and shame associated with abuse, and to show survivors true courage, strength, inspiration, and determination. — Erin Merryn

In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived. In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then. In her life she is both celebrant and proof of women's capacity and will to survive, to become, to act, to change self and society. And each year she is stronger and there are more of her. — Andrea Dworkin

Otto Cone as a man of seventy-plus years jumped into an open lift shaft and died. Now this was a subject which Alicia Cone, who would readily discuss the most taboo matters refused to touch upon. Why does a survivor of the camps live forty years then complete the job the monsters didn't get done? Does great evil eventually triumph no matter how strenuously it is resisted? Does it leave a sliver of ice in the blood working its way through until it reaches the heart? Or worse, can a man's death be incompatible with his life? Alicia, who's first response on hearing of her father's death had been fury, flung such questions as these at her mother, who stone-faced beneath a broad-brimmed black hat said only, You have inherited his lack of restraint my dear. — Salman Rushdie

You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said.
"And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death. — Frank Herbert