Lee Ring > Lee's Quotes

“Apologies do not make good bandages.”
― Clementine von Radics, As Often As Miracles

“You never need to apologize
for how you chose to survive.”
― Clementine von Radics

“We are more than the worst thing that's ever happened to us. All of us need to stop apologizing, for having been to hell and come back breathing.”
― Clementine von Radics

“Survival feels like cowardice.”
― Ann Aguirre, Aftermath

“May we each find in ourselves the courage we forgot we have, to see the beauty we forgot is inside us, while battling the demons we forgot we can slay, on a battlefield we forgot we can win.”
― Agnostic Zetetic

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“What I understand now about survival is that something in you dies. You don't become a survivor intact. Survival's cost is always loss.”
― J Dylan Yates

“Bellusdeo laughed. It was, for a moment, the only sound in the quiet of the fief’s night, and it was warmer and deeper than the lingering night chill. When her laughter faded, she glanced at Kaylin. “I was not like this before. I thought that the Shadows had not touched me.” She lowered her head a moment.
Kaylin understood this, as well. “It seems so unfair,” she finally said.
“Life is unfair. Which part of it pains you?”
“We suffer, and it breaks something. When we win free—by gaining our name, by crossing a bloody bridge—we still live in a cage of scars. If life were fair, we would never have suffered what we suffered at all; having suffered it and survived, we’re still reacting to things that don’t exist anymore.”
“But they did.”
“Yes. I hate that they still define me.” Voice lower, she said to Bellusdeo, “I want that to change. I don’t know how to change it. But I’m willing to spend the rest of my life trying.” Shaking her head, she forced herself to smile; it was surprisingly easy. There was something about Bellusdeo that she liked. “Home is a strange thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“We lose it, and we think it’s gone forever. That’s how I felt the first time I lost mine. It took me years to understand that I could find—and make—another. I couldn’t do it on my own, though; I don’t think—for me—home exists in isolation.”
― Michelle Sagara West, Cast in Ruin

“As we used to say in the mountains, "Breathe. Breathe again. With every breath, you are alive." After all these years, this still the best advice I can give you: Savor your existence. Live every moment. Do not waste a breath.”
― Nando Parrado, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

“Mind led body
to the edge of the precipice.
They stared in desire
at the naked abyss.
If you love me, said mind,
take that step into silence.
If you love me, said body,
turn and exist.”
― Anne Stevenson

“Survivors aren't always the strongest; sometimes they're the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest.”
― Carrie Ryan, The Dark and Hollow Places

“mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.”
― Joseph Heller

“Your fear is 100% dependent on you for its survival.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat

“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in...”
― Nick Hornby, How to Be Good

“We each survive in our own way.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.”
― Kevin Brockmeier, The View from the Seventh Layer

“Tough times don't last, tough people do, remember?”
― Gregory Peck

“Here is the secret to surviving one of these [airplane] crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emergency evacuations, the most prominent factor influencing survival was gender (followed closely by proximity to exit). Adult males were by far the most likely to get out alive. Why? Presumably because they pushed everyone else out of the way.”
― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”
― edwin louis cole

“Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.”
― William Knowlton Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

“One thing you have to realize from now on is that it doesn't matter if this is a dream or not. Survival depends on what you do, not what you think.”
― Rebecca McKinsey, Anterria

“But part of surviving is being able to move on.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”
― William Zinsser

“But what if we fail' they ask, whispering the dreaded word across the Generation Gap to their parents. 'Don't' they whisper back. What they should say is 'Don't be afraid to fail. Failure isn't fatal”
― William Zinsser

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”
― Vicki Harrison

“Public truth telling is a form of recovery, especially when combined with social action. Sharing traumatic experiences with others enables victims to reconstruct repressed memory, mourn loss, and master helplessness, which is trauma's essential insult. And, by facilitating reconnection to ordinary life, the public testimony helps survivors restore basic trust in a just world and overcome feelings of isolation. But the talking cure is predicated on the existence of a community willing to bear witness. 'Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships,' write Judith Herman. 'It cannot occur in isolation.”
― Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana

“There are many good reasons for writing that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its satisfactions is to come to terms with your life narrative. Another is to work through some of life’s hardest knocks—loss, grief, illness, addiction, disappointment, failure—and to find understanding and solace.”
― William Knowlton Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction