#survivors

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River) ↗

— Dennis Lehane

#shell-shocked #survivors #the-walking-dead #death

It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism. ↗

— Johan Huizinga

#fallen #hero #heroic #heroism #impossible

I was actually very pleased that they let me do it, because I feel very deeply for breast cancer survivors. I don't have it, but it is in my family. I've always been very aware of it. I go for mammograms and checkups. ↗

— Erika Slezak

#always #aware #because #been #breast cancer

People wait in line to see me, saying there's plenty of living to be done even if you have an HIV diagnosis. People say they are 10- or 15-year survivors and still moving forward. ↗

— Greg Louganis

#done #even #forward #hiv #line

Survivors can't always choose their methods. ↗

— Patricia Briggs

#survivors #inspirational

People say we are survivors but I don't see us as survivors of anything. We are still here, there's nothing that's come and tried to dislodge us. We just go about our business. ↗

— Dave Mason

#anything #business #come #dislodge #go

The Minnesota spirit of compassion and help for people in need has moved countless Minnesotans to step forward to provide relief for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. ↗

— Jim Ramstad

#countless #forward #help #hurricane #hurricane katrina

You can recognize survivors by their creativity. In soulful, insightful, gentle, and nurturing creations, they often express the inner beauty they brought out of childhood storms. ↗

— Jeanne McElvaney

#abuse-survivors #childhood-abuse #childhood-sexual-abuse #effects-of-child-abuse #harrietta-s-happenstance

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#anonymity #born-again #clean-slate #extinction #family

The sea always offers up incredible stories of survivors' fortitude. Myths of a lot of countries have variations on that. ↗

— Colin Farrell

#countries #fortitude #incredible #lot #myths