Survivors Guilt Quotes

“I left a piece of my soul that will always rightfully belong in the desert.”
― M.B. Dallocchio, The Desert Warrior

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

“It's nobody's fault. But is that even true? It's only human nature to look for a place to lay the blame. Our fingers are more than ready to do the pointing it's like we're all blindfolded and spinning”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“There is this guilt that often accompanies being the first one to leave home. You will feel as though you shouldn’t have, so you will find a way to suffer, to not succeed. Your mind will trick you into believing it is a mistake to survive without the rest.”
― Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“What was it like, to be the only one who came back? The only one who still had a body to touch, to hurt, to yearn with? The last one still able to die?”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“It lessened some of the suffocating weight I carried by finally opening up to a counselor.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, If There's No Tomorrow

“There is this guilt that often accompanies being the first one to leave home.
You will feel as though you shouldn’t have, so you will find a way to suffer, to not succeed.
Your mind will trick you into believing it is a mistake to survive without the rest.”
― Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“I wanted to remember everything. Their faces, despite their terrible last moments, were forced to assume the peaceful indifference of death. But what amount of helplessness and desperation did those awful calm faces inspire in us, the survivors?”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“She’d have liked to say that she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, but that wouldn’t have been quite truthful. She’d wanted to hurt everyone, to make them feel what she felt, or even just not to be alone in it. In the wake of her loss, she’d longed to throw away everything she’d worked for, just to undo the agonizing truth that she could not accept.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon