Survivor Guilt Quotes

“The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.

The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015”
― David Brooks

“They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened
Exodus (1960) screenplay”
― Dalton Trumbo

“One must consider that small children are virtually incapable of making much impact on their world. No matter what path taken as a
child, survivors grow up believing they should have done something differently.
Perhaps there is no greater form of
survivor guilt than “I didn't try to stop it." Or “I should have told." The legacy of a helpless, vulnerable, out-of-control, and humiliated child creates an adult who is generally tentative, insecure, and quite angry. The anger is not often expressed, however, as it is not safe to be angry with violent people. Confrontation and conflict are difficult for many survivors.”
― Sarah E. Olson

“There comes a time for us not to just be survivors, but to be warriors. Yara, you have your life, and the chance to make the most of it. Don't run or hide from that challenge or let your guilt keep you from living your life. This gift is such a beautiful opportunity. Embrace it. Seize every opportunity from here on out. Live.”
― Becca Vry, Musings: An Argyle Empire Anthology

“Don't step off the road --- There might be another one!”
― James M. McGarrity

“He cannot forgive himself for having saved himself when his wife and child went to their deaths we are all as if drugged. Yesterday all of my family were living and now - all are dead. Each of us stands as if turn to stone. I weep for my fate, for what I have left to see.”
― Chil Rajchman, The Last Jew of Treblinka

“Many veterans feel guilty because they lived while others died. Some feel ashamed because they didn’t bring all their men home and wonder what they could have done differently to save them. When they get home they wonder if there’s something wrong with them because they find war repugnant but also thrilling. They hate it and miss it.Many of their self-judgments go to extremes. A comrade died because he stepped on an improvised explosive device and his commander feels unrelenting guilt because he didn’t go down a different street. Insurgents used women and children as shields, and soldiers and Marines feel a totalistic black stain on themselves because of an innocent child’s face, killed in the firefight. The self-condemnation can be crippling.
The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015”
― David Brooks

“Why did he see other people dying on the news and yet he was still alive?”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“The wave of pure outrage blindsided me. I shouldn't be here, I thought. This is utterly fucked up. I should have been sitting in a garden down the road, barefoot with a drink in my hand, swapping the day's work stories with Peter and Jamie. I had never thought about this before, and it almost knocked me over: all the things we should have had. We should have stayed up all night together studying and stressing out before exams, Peter and I should have argued over who got to bring Jamie to our first dance and slagged her about how she looked in her dress. We should have come weaving home together, singing and laughing and inconsiderate, after drunken college nights. We could have shared a flat, taken off Interrailing around Europe, gone arm-in-arm through dodgy fashion phases and low-rent gigs and high-drama love affairs. Two of us might have been married by now, given the other one a godchild. I had been robbed blind.”
― Tana French, In the Woods

“It wasn’t me these people cared about; it was my capacity to soak up pain like a sponge.”
― Ilana Masad

“The shards of my heart shift and drive into my lungs, making breathing an agony.”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“A vale of crippling numbness drifted over her, a depression so great it waved over the floor where she stepped like water.”
― Matthew Little, Florida

“You were one of the lucky ones," Dr. Fleming had told him not a fortnight ago. "But you can't see it as luck. In your view it's intolerable, your survival. You're punishing yourself because a whimsical God let you live. You think you've failed the dead, failed to protect them and keep them alive and bring them back home again. But no one could have done that, Ian. Don't you see? No one could have brought all of them through!”
― Charles Todd, A Cold Treachery

“How do survivors feel? Relieved and grateful, perhaps. As excited about their saved life as if it were a gift that the rustling fingers feverishly unwrap from its packaging on Christmas morning and whatever is underneath: you are happy. This is how it should be when you have survived the worst. Far from the crippling horror we were feeling.”
― Sima B. Moussavian, Tomorrow death died out: What if the future were past?

“The words have forasken us but we continue to write because the brave souls of Gaza continue to bleed. It is as if we are part of an endless funeral procession. The grief comes in waves, it ebbs and flows but mostly it crashes onto our hearts with great force and leaves us breathless. Helpless.”
― Aysha Taryam

“We assume that it's better to survive things, but the ones who don't survive don't have to miss anyone.”
― Jeff Zentner, Goodbye Days

“I let myself cry for exactly one minute in the shower—one of six stalls in what used to be a shared space but now belonged to just me.”
― Michael Mammay, The Weight of Command

“He will be okay. Keep courage.
Courage.
That's what they kept calling it.
This thing they wanted him to keep.
But how did you keep something you did not own? Did not know? Could not find in the hungry panic inside you?”
― Sonali Dev, A Distant Heart

“Guilt is a weight, a leaden chain; it can morph and stretch itself to every space, like the supple frame of a cuttlefish. But guilt has no heart and cannot live forever: each heartbeat destroys a little universe, brings another one into life.”
― Sheila Armstrong, Falling Animals