Katherine > Katherine's Quotes

“On May 26th, 2003,
Aaron Ralston was hiking,
a boulder fell on his right hand,
he waited four days,
he then amputated
his own arm with a pocketknife.

On New Year’s Eve,
a woman was bungee jumping,
the cord broke,
she fell into a river
and had to swim back to land
in crocodile-infested waters
with a broken collarbone.

Claire Champlin was smashed in the face
by a five-pound watermelon
being propelled by a slingshot.

Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin.

David Striegl was actually
punched in the mouth by a kangaroo.

The most amazing part of these stories
is when asked about the experience
they all smiled, shrugged and said
“I guess things could’ve been worse.”

So go ahead,
tell me you’re having a bad day.

Tell me about the traffic.
Tell me about your boss.
Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years.
Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher.

Tell me the alarm clock
stole the keys to your smile,
drove it into 7 am
and the crash totaled your happiness.
Tell me.
Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy
so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues.

When Evan lost his legs he was speechless.
When my cousin was assaulted
she didn’t speak for 48 hours.
When my uncle was murdered,
we had to send out a search party
to find my father’s voice.

Most people have no idea
that tragedy and silence
often have the exact same address.

When your day is a museum of disappointments,
hanging from events that were outside of your control,
when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago
and just decided not to tell you,
when it seems like God
is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone,
when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life.

Remember,
every year
two million people die of dehydration.
So it doesn’t matter if
the glass is half full or half empty.
There’s water in the cup.
Drink it and stop complaining.

Muscle is created by lifting things
that are designed to weigh us down.
When your shoulders are heavy
stand up straight and call it exercise.
Life is a gym membership
with a really complicated cancellation policy.

Remember,
you will survive,
things could be worse,
and we are never given
anything we can’t handle.
When the whole world crumbles,
you have to build a new one
out of all the pieces that are still here.

Remember,
you are still here.
The human heart beats
approximately 4,000 times per hour
and each pulse,
each throb,
each palpitation is a trophy,
engraved with the words
“You are still alive.”
You are still alive.
So act like it.”
― Rudy Francisco, Helium

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.”
― Robert Bly, My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems

“A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.”
― Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
― John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.”
― Andy Rooney

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”
― Marcel Proust

“As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
― Rumi Jalalud-Din

“What makes night within us may leave stars.”
― Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three

“Live simply. Deepest joy is like a flower....beautiful in essence.”
― Tony Samara

“And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.”
― Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

“I don’t wear a red cape.

I can’t scale buildings like a salamander or leap across canyons

twenty miles wide. I don’t have a huge S emblazoned across my chest.

My superpowers come from teaching myself how to survive

when all I wanted to do was be one of the people

that heroes are supposed to save.”
― Meggie Royer

“Life is a photograph too, so thank you,

for not removing yourself from the picture just yet.”
― Meggie Royer

“On your worst days do not look in the mirror and call yourself pretty. Call yourself trying, call yourself surviving, call yourself learning how to get through a day, a week, a month or year. Call yourself still learning.”
― Meggie Royer

“My friends are the beings through whom God loves me.”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“I now inhabit a life I don't deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Life should be about changing for the better. If you have to let go of some people along the way, then go right ahead.”
― Krystal Volney

“If someone hurt you, abandoned you, betrayed you..it says nothing about your meaningfulness but everything about their character.”
― Krystal Volney

“In life's journey, you will meet all sorts of characters. Always remember, never shed a tear for the heartless, corrupt or insensitive.”
― Krystal Volney

“I know men who are healthier at fifty than they've ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.”
― Robert Bly

“The Wild Man doesn’t come to full life through being “natural,” going with the flow, smoking weed, reading nothing, and being generally groovy. Ecstasy amounts to living within reach of the high voltage of the golden gifts. The ecstasy comes after thought, after discipline imposed on ourselves, after grief.”
― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men

“Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.”
― Conrad Joseph

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”
― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven

“We've been taught a woman's body will cause men to sin. We're told that if a woman shows too much of her body men will do stupid things. Let's be clear: a woman's body is not dangerous to you. Her body will not cause you harm. It will not make you do stupid things. If you do stupid things it is because you chose to do stupid things.”
― Nate Pyle

“Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.”
― Immanuel Kant