Survivors Club Quotes

I don't mind getting older; it's a privilege denied to so many!

Or, God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivor's Club wasn't something you "earned," but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother's womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: the nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people's, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains... At the core, it was all the same.

Have you noticed," she asked him, "how standing still can sometimes be no different from moving backward? For the whole world moves on and leaves one behind.

What I learned is that it's arrogant to be certain of anything. The world is a complex place and only idiots or assholes think they know it all.

The trouble with running away is that you must always take yourself with you.

When one had once suffered a great hurt, there was always a weakness afterward, a vulnerability where there had been wholeness and strength before - and innocence.

No time is really wasted unless one never learns the lessons that it offers.

We can always do anything as long as we are alive. We can always change, grow, evolve into a far better version of ourselves. It is surely what life is for.

We can never benefit today from the wisdom we will have gained tomorrow.

He offered his arm and she took it. And the world was the same place. And forever different.

In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action and embracing this paradox can save your life.

How easy it is to dismiss the outer packaging without an inkling that one is thereby missing the precious beauty within.

There is a terrible pain,” she said softly, “about being abandoned by someone who loves someone else more than you. A pain and an emptiness and a determination never again to give anyone that power.

Clubs shook his head. "Kelsier. Gave us a city, made us think we were responsible for protecting it." "But we aren't that kind of people," Breeze said. "We're thieves and scammers. We shouldn't care. I mean... I've gotten so bad that I Soothe scullery maids so that they'll have a happier time at work! I might as well start dressing in pink and carrying around flowers. I could probably make quite a bundle at weddings." Clubs snorted. Then he raised his cup. "To the Survivor," he said "May he be damned for knowing us better than we knew in ourselves." Breeze raised his own cup. " Damn him," he agreed quietly.

Why was it that silence sometimes felt like a physical thing with a weight of its own?

Living in a house with a large library,” she said, “is a little like living in heaven

Fear must be challenged, I have found. It is a powerful beat if it is allowed the mastery.

Atheists are the most honest of the human race. These people are unable to live a double life; they are unable to lie to themselves. Of course it's an evolutionary handicap, and if that handicap was widespread, our species would run the risk of extinction

I came," he said. Good Lord! If there were an orator-of-the-year award, he would be in dire danger of winning it.

There is no such place as the promised land, but it would be foolish to reject even an unpromised land as worthless without first inspecting it thoroughly.

One does tend to assume that life must be far easier for others than it ever is for oneself,” he said. “I suspect it rarely is. I daresay life was not meant to be easy.

The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.

I do not believe there is right or wrong," he said. "there is only doing what one must do under given circumstances and living with the consequences and weaving every experiences, good and bad, into the fabric of one's life so that ultimately one can see the pattern of it all and accept the lessons life has taught.

My woman. She had a momentary image of a caveman, hanging on to his woman by the hair with one hand while in the other he wielded a club to beat back caveman number two. Perhaps she would sketch it one day.

People, especially some religious people. would have us believe that it is wrong . even a sin, to love oneself. It is not. It is the basic, essential love. If you do not love yourself, you cannot possibly love anyone else. Not fully and truly.

People do understand the language of the heart, you know, even if the head does not always comprehend it.

When we last out at ourselves for having lost control, we are reminded that we never can be in total control, that all life asks of us is to do our best to cope with what is handed to us.

Youthful dreams are precious things. They ought not to be dashed as foolish and unrealistic just because they are young dreams. Innocence ought not to be destroyed from any callous conviction that a realistic sort of cynicism is better.

Stanbrook once told me," he said, "that suicide is the worst kind of selfishness, as it is often a plea to specific people who are left stranded in the land of the living, unable for all eternity to answer the plea

The world is a complex place and only idiots and assholes think they know it all.

A funny thing, love. It was not always, or even mostly, a sexual thing.

Negativity could be frighteningly contagious.

That is the excitement of life," he said when he was finished. "The not knowing. It is often best not to know.

The wind was cold and cut into her even though it was at her back, but she loved the wild sound and the salt smell of it and the deepened sense of solitude it brought.

They were stranded on the opposite sides of death, at least for now, and that was all there was to it.

Living is not merely a matter of staying alive, is it? It is what you do with your life and the fact of your survival that counts.

One could not live forever, though, upon memories and dreams. One could not forever ignore the fact that one was alone and that perhaps one would be alone for the rest of one’s life.

Your sense of guilt will linger. It will always be part of you. but sharing it, allowing people to love you anyway, will do you the world of good. Secrets need an outlet if they are not to fester and become an unbearable burden.

But I am glad you are not some sort of superhuman pillar of strength. I would not be able to prevail against it. I am too weak, too fragile. In each other’s weaknesses, perhaps we can both find strength.

She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.

Once in, when did one fall out of love? It had taken several weeks back in October - though it seemed the feeling had merely lain dormant instead of going away altogether. How long would it take this time? And when would it be gone forever?

Why say something," he asked her, "if your words mean nothing?

He wished he understood women better. It was a well-known fact that they did not mean half of what they said. But which half did they mean?

Hugo could cheerfully have died of mortification - if such a mass of contradictions had been possible.

One cannot try marriage. Once one is in, there is no way out.

It is hard, is it not,” he said, “to have one’s life develop quite differently from what one expected and to feel not fully in command of it?

We often do not say what is in our hearts,” he said, “to those who are closest and most dear to us.

Sometimes sexuality was more compelling when it was not overt.

Do you believe that sometimes life points out a way for us to follow even if it does not force us into taking that particular path?

We are made up of everything we have ever been, Percy. It is the joy and the pain of our individuality. There are no two of us the same.

I prefer to think of marriage as an equality of give and take.

We sighted people are often neglectful of the power of sound.

life was not easy. And what an earth-shatteringly original observation that was.

We normally know we're getting older when the only thing we want for our birthday is not to be reminded; unless you're a cancer survivor! Then we love people reminding us!

Observations often tell you more about the observer than the observed.

She had held her life to an even keel by killing all deep feeling, by living upon the surface of life.

I think it is more tha6 the sea is a reminder of how little control we have over our own lives no matter how carefully we try to plan and order them. Everything changes in ways we least expect, and everything is frighteningly vast. We are so small.

I am your husband. When you feel lonely or afraid or unhappy, it is to me you must come. My arms are here for you, and my strength too for whatever it is worth. You will never be a burden to me.

She bit her lower lip hard and blinked her eyes. There was such wistfulness and longing in his voice. Oh, she was going to give him back his eyes, or the next best thing, if it took her the rest of her life to do it.

He asked me not to kill myself - asked, not told. His wife had done that, he told me, and it was in a sense the ultimate act of selfishness since it left behind untold and endless suffering for those who had witnessed it and been unable to do anything to prevent it. And so I remained alive.

The comforting thing about difficult days, Chloe had learned from experience, was that the sun rose at the start of them and set at the end just as it did on any other day. And there was always the assurance of better days ahead.

One should love from a position of wholeness. One should have a firm and rich sense of self no matter what. For there is always pain—it cannot be avoided in this life, more’s the pity. But pain should not destroy the person who feels it.

You will find that wanting, even loving, is not enough.

It was what remained to a relationship after the first euphoria of the romance had faded.

Home had always been a place to dream of.

Little people are often more fierce than their larger counterparts[...]

[...] a pearl probably does not look so very remarkable either while it is still hidden inside its shell.

Sometimes, self-pity was so ingrained in people that nothing could persuade them to take joy out of living.

He was insulting her sex but complimenting her personally. Was she supposed to simper with gratitude?

If she allowed herself to wallow in self-pity, she would be in danger of becoming one of those habitual moaners and complainers everyone avoided.

war often wounds the soul as deeply as it does the body, sometimes more so.

But all through life, it seems, we have to learn and relearn the lesson of loving people unconditionally, no matter what.

It is just a pity," he added, "that some things can never be entirely forgotten just by trying. But we have all learned that lesson.

All journeys eventually end in the same place, home. - Chris Geiger

The world is such a big place; staying in one town your whole life, is like never leaving your house.

Your father is your f-father regardless, Agnes. Birth and b-breeding do not always depend upon small matters like who provided the seed.

You have love all wrong, Gwendoline. It is not all give, give, give. It is taking as well. It is allowing the other one the pleasure and joy of giving. Let me love you.

What do you not have, Lord Hardford?” she asked. “For no one has everything, you know, or even nearly everything.

There is a l-life lesson here for all of us, is there, M-Mrs. Keeping?” he asked her. “We should all and always look upward, and all our t-troubles will be at an end?” She smiled. “If only life were that simple.” “But for daffodils it is,” he said. “We are not daffodils.

You are not by any manner of means the sort of woman I am in search of as a wife, and I am in a totally different universe from the husband you hope to find. But I feel a powerful urge to kiss you, for all that.

But one never quite reached the point at which one could relax and know that one had made it through to the other side of suffering and could now be simply content, even happy, inside a balanced mix of body, mind, and spirit.

One of the most horrible realities about the death of someone closely related, she remembered, was the necessity of going on almost immediately with the trivialities of living. As though nothing of any real significance had changed.

I like your voice. That sounds ridiculously lame, I know. But when you cannot see, Miss Fry, sound and the other senses become far more acute. Normally one likes the look of someone to whom one feels attracted. I like the sound of your voice.

It is impossible to recapture innocence once it has been exposed for the illusion it is," she said. "Illusion?" He frowned. "Why should innocence be more unreal, more untrue, than cynicism?" "I am not cynical," she said. "But no, I could not go back.

Now was the time for now. Now was one of those rare and precious moments with which one was gifted from time to time. That was all it was. A moment. But it was one to be enjoyed to the full while it lasted and treasured for a lifetime after it was over.

Pain is not insignificant. Neither is bewilderment or fear. Or conditions like poverty or homelessness. But somewhere—somewhere—there is peace. It is not even far off. It is somewhere deep inside us, in fact, ever present, just waiting for us to look inward to find it.” She

Ben walked into the house and up the stairs with his two canes, but he propelled himself about much of the time after that in a wheeled chair, having decided that it was not an admission of defeat but rather a moving forward into a new, differently active phase of his life.

Make each feature work hard to be implemented. Make each feature prove itself and show that it's a survivor. It's like "Fight Club". You should only consider features if they're willing to stand on the porch for three days waiting to be let in. That's why you start with no. Every feature request that comes in to us — or from us — meets a no. We listen but don't act. The initial response is "not now". If a request for a feature keeps coming back, that's when we know it's time to take a deeper look. Then, and only then, do we start considering the feature for real.

I do not want to drain all your light, Percy," she said. Something sparked in his eyes. "But there is never an end to light, Imogen," he told her, "or to love. I'll fill you so full of light that you will glow in the dark, and then when I want to love you in a very physical way I will be able to find you.

Some things," she said, "are best not known for sure, Lord Trentham.

Butterflies were all very pretty in a meadow. They were altogether less comfortable in her stomach.

the Shitstorm Survivors’ Club. Christ,

Sometimes one feels the need of a word more powerful than love, or at least one more exclusive to the love of one's heart.

One could not change the past anyway. Why let it blight the present and the future?

She was Sophia Fry, though her name was rarely used. She was known by her relatives, when she was known as anything at all, and perhaps by their servants too, as the mouse.

There are voices that are lovely for various reasons or annoying for other reasons [...]

The future would take care of itself.

Besides, how could one apologize for kissing a woman twice? Once might be explained away as an impulsive accident. Twice suggested definite intent or a serious lack of control. His

Negativity could be frighteningly contagious. Even

Forever is not granted to any of us,” the duchess said. “Even tomorrow is not granted as by right. Any of us can go at any moment.

openness and truth between partners were necessary if the marriage was to have a chance of bringing them any sort of happiness.

Constance had joined him at the breakfast

Ah, these double meanings,” she said. “Who invented the English language, I wonder? He did not do a stellar job of it, whoever he was.

I do not understand dalliance, Lord Ponsonby.” “But you are d-drawn to it, Mrs. Keeping.

There is no such thing as a bad book, I just like some books more than others. - Chris Geiger

The only thing over which we have any control whatsoever is the very next decision we make.

He had been raised, after all, to stand alone and always to do what he believed to be right.

All people, he thought with a sigh as he left the room, had their own demons to be fought—or not fought. Perhaps that was what life was all about. Perhaps life was a test to see how well we deal with our own particular demons, and how much sympathy we show others as they tread their own particular path through life. You do not still hate her?” she asked as he moved her off to the side of the path for an open carriage that was coming toward them. “It is not easy to hate,” he said, “when one has lived long enough to know that everyone has a difficult path to walk through life and does not always make wise or admirable choices. There are very few out-and-out villains, perhaps none. Though there are a few who come very close.

Where would we go?' she asked. 'Far, far away.' His eyes dipped to her lips when she moistened them with her tongue. 'Ah.' Her voice was a breathless whisper. 'The very best place to go.

She would try to paint. She would always try, for the road to perfection held an irresistible lure, even if the destination remained always tantalizingly just beyond the farthest horizon.

I am in awe,” he said. “Where do all these ideas come from?” “I think from a lifetime of only being able to observe and never being able to do,” she said. “I have twenty years of inaction to make up for.

We women are impractical because we have hearts. Not that men do not, but they feel things differently. They do not feel the suffering around them, or, if they do, they know how to harden their hearts when it has nothing to do with them.

you are usually in a different universe,” she said, “one that revolves about you. The Peninsula was full of rude, blustering officers who believed other people had been created to pay them homage. I always thought they were merely silly and best ignored.

His years of dependency were past. It was time to grow up and take charge. It was not going to be easy. But he had long ago realized that he must treat his blindness as a challenge rather than as a handicap if he wished to enjoy anything like a happy, fulfilled life.

It was beginning to feel like an almost familiar place to be. But perhaps hitting this new low had something to be said for it, she thought now, this morning, after she had awoken and realized in some surprise that she had slept for several hours. At least now there was no further down to go. And

He thought the library door would never open again, but that he would be left to live out the rest of his life rooted to the spot on the library carpet, afraid to move a muscle lest the house fall upon his shoulders. He deliberately shrugged them and shuffled his feel just to prove to himself that it could be done.

Imagine a single survivor, a lonely fugitive at large on mainland Mauritius at the end of the seventeenth century. Imagine this fugitive as a female. She would have been bulky and flightless and befuddled—but resourceful enough to have escaped and endured when the other birds didn’t. Or else she was lucky. Maybe she had spent all her years in the Bambous Mountains along the southeastern coast, where the various forms of human-brought menace were slow to penetrate. Or she might have lurked in a creek drainage of the Black River Gorges. Time and trouble had finally caught up with her. Imagine that her last hatchling had been snarfed by a [invasive] feral pig. That her last fertile egg had been eaten by a [invasive] monkey. That her mate was dead, clubbed by a hungry Dutch sailor, and that she had no hope of finding another. During the past halfdozen years, longer than a bird could remember, she had not even set eyes on a member of her own species. Raphus cucullatus had become rare unto death. But this one flesh-and-blood individual still lived. Imagine that she was thirty years old, or thirty-five, an ancient age for most sorts of bird but not impossible for a member of such a large-bodied species. She no longer ran, she waddled. Lately she was going blind. Her digestive system was balky. In the dark of an early morning in 1667, say, during a rainstorm, she took cover beneath a cold stone ledge at the base of one of the Black River cliffs. She drew her head down against her body, fluffed her feathers for warmth, squinted in patient misery. She waited. She didn't know it, nor did anyone else, but she was the only dodo on Earth. When the storm passed, she never opened her eyes. This is extinction.

And then, when I was at my lowest ebb, you came. And you somehow coaxed me into talking to you as though you were a trusted confidant. And then you flirted with me. For a few moments you bore me off with you to the sunshine above the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped together in warm furs and bound for a place far, far away. And then you kissed me.

Viscount Darleigh was charming as well as handsome, and he had the uncanny ability to look in the direction of the person who was speaking almost as if he could see that person. He moved about with the aid of a cane but with surprising confidence. It was clear that he had learned how to cope with his blindness at least within the confines of his own home.

Miss Fry had been borne off, as planned, Hugo reported, to be outfitted from head to toe for her wedding and her new life. His wife had gone with her, and so had the Countess of Kilbourne, her sister-in-law. Vincent hoped Sophia would not feel overwhelmed. “They will look after her, lad,” Hugo assured him as though he had read Vincent’s thoughts. “Woman power or something hideous like that. It is better to stay far away from it and let them do what they must do.

In each club we went the dancers had the same moves, none nearly as sensuous as mine on any dance floor, but because they are scantily clad and stripping off the men go nuts and throw money at them. In the largest club and the last we went to I watched one pretty girl with big boobs pull a handful of twenties in one set. I followed her to the ladies-room to learn she only danced a few rounds per night and averaged $250 every night and with my face and body she said I would bank much more.

As the two held stares, it was hard not to feel part of a unique club that no one would ever volunteer to be associated with. Membership wasn’t sought or desirable or something to crow about . . . but it was real and it was powerful: Survivors of similar wrecks could see the horrors of those jagged shoals in the eyes of others. It was like recognizing like. It was two people with the same tattoo on their insides, the divide of a trauma that separated them from the rest of the planet unexpectedly bringing a pair of weary souls closer together. Or

Comedy is tragedy plus x, with x being an amount of time defined by the person experiencing the tragedy. Some people need less time than others. I joked about Dad’s death as it was happening. But that gave some friends the impression they could join in . No . My dad, my jokes. A Facebook friend posted one day after Dad died: “Welcome to the Dead Dad Club.” I hated him instantly. He was an Early Orphan. I scrolled through his profile pictures, I saw smiles . Life had gone on for him. I didn’t want to be in his stupid club, I didn’t want to read his wry asides.

Cindy wasn’t like that. Up until the bitter end, she was thinking about me, trying to prepare me.” Griffin smiled again, but this time the smile was bittersweet. “She was the one who was dying, but she understood I had the tougher burden to bear.” “You had to live after she was gone.” “I would’ve traded places with her in a heartbeat,” Griffin said quietly. “I would’ve climbed gladly into that hospital bed. Taken the pain, taken the agonizing wasting away, suffered the death. I would’ve done . . . anything. But we don’t get to choose which one of us dies and which one of us lives.

The very little town of N. was largely bypassed by the revolution—the red cavalries thundered by, stopping only to appropriate the ill-gotten wealth of Countess Komarova, the lone survivor of N.’s only noble family. The wealth was somewhat less than the appropriators had anticipated—a ruined mansion and no funds to repair it. The Countess fled to N.’s only inn, and the red cavalry moved on but not before breaking all the windows of Komarov’s mansion and allocating it for the local youth club. Everyone knows what N.’s youth is like, and by fall, most of the Countess’ furniture was turned into firewood, and by mid-December the mansion stood abandoned and decrepit, and a turd frozen to its parquet floors served as its only furnishing and a testament of gloria mundi transiting hastily.

The full flowering of human resilience is awesome,” he says. Every human being is born with the strength to heal. No amount of violence or torture can destroy that capacity. No barbarism or savagery can crush the ability to recover and rebuild. “Even in the most hopeless human being,” he tells me, “there is hope.

What happened in Nyamata, in the churches, in the marshes and on the hills, were the abnormal actions of perfectly normal people. Here's why I say that. The principal and the inspector of schools in my district joined in the killings with nail-studded clubs. Two teachers, colleagues with whom I used to share beers and student evaluations, pitched in to help, so to speak. A priest, the mayor, the assistant chief of police, a doctor - they all killed with their own hands.

looking down on them. There was no sky in the painting, only grass and flowers. Time crawled by when she was not painting, and sometimes even when she was. She could not see the Middlebury Park visitors leaving quickly enough. Perhaps her peace would be restored when they had gone away. When he had gone away.

We will see,” he said. “Yes,

I always do what my mother tells me, except when I do not.

Each of us can do only what is within his power. If we dwell on our inability to solve the world's problems, our only possible recourse is despair. Despair accomplishes nothing.

at

Even if your past was marred by a dark cloud, aim for a future that is bright. Stride confidently into the light, scars and all. You are more than your scars. You are more than your past. You are a survivor, a warrior, and a shining star. Take a deep breath and hold your head up high. Let your light shine so bright.

Even if your past was marred by a dark cloud, aim for a future that is bright. Stride confidently into the light, scars and all. You are more than your scars. You are more than your past. You are a survivor, a warrior and a shining star. Take a deep breath and hold your head up high. Let your light shine so bright.

sit within five rows of an exit. Memorize an escape plan. And perhaps most important of all: try to relax.

While today may seem challenging, it’s not. Some people are visiting cancer hospitals for treatment. Their determination should demonstrate the opportunities you have today, they they hope one day they have too!” - Chris Geiger

While today may seem challenging, it’s not. Some people are visiting cancer hospitals for treatment. Their determination should demonstrate the opportunities you have today, which they pray one day they will have too!” - Chris Geiger

Maybe the Survivors’ Club wasn’t something you “earned,” but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother’s womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: The nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people’s, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains . . . at the core, it was all the same.

As the two held stares, it was hard not to feel part of a unique club that no one would ever volunteer to be associated with. Membership wasn’t sought or desirable or something to crow about . . . but it was real and it was powerful: Survivors of similar wrecks could see the horrors of those jagged shoals in the eyes of others. It was like recognizing like. It was two people with the same tattoo on their insides, the divide of a trauma that separated them from the rest of the planet unexpectedly bringing a pair of weary souls closer together.

That’s why the survivor clubs formed. The only people who really understood were the people who had been through those experiences.

The Etiquette of Illness, a book from 2004 by a social worker and psychotherapist named Susan Halpern, who is herself a cancer survivor. The subtitle is What to Say When You Can’t Find the Words. But it’s really about what to do when you feel scared that doing something, if it turns out to be the wrong thing, might be worse than doing nothing at all.

Dreams are wishes that will in all probability never come true. (Sophie)

Good Lord, even to his own ears they sounded like a pair of coconspirators being so overhearty in their enthusiastic simulation of innocence that they proclaimed themselves as guilty as hell.

One cannot examine the actions of the Secret Service on November 22, 1963, without concluding that the Service stood down on protecting President Kennedy. Indeed, the 120-degree turn into Dealey Plaza violates Secret Service procedures, because it required the presidential limousine to come to a virtual stop. The reduction of the president’s motorcycle escort from six police motorcycles to two and the order for those two officers to ride behind the presidential limousine also violates standard Secret Service procedure. The failure to empty and secure the tall buildings on either side of the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza likewise violates formal procedure, as does the lack of any agents dispersed through the crowd gathered in Dealey Plaza. Readers who are interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Secret Service’s multiple failures and the conspicuous violation of longstanding Secret Service policies regarding the movement and protection of the president on November 22, 1963, should read Vince Palamara’s Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect. The difference in JFK Secret Service protection and its adherence to the services standard required procedures in Chicago and Miami would be starkly different from the arrangements for Dallas. Palamara established that Agent Emory Roberts worked overtime to help both orchestrate the assassination and cover up the unusual actions of the Secret Service in the aftermath. Roberts was commander of the follow-up car trailing the presidential limousine. Roberts covered up the escapades of his fellow secret servicemen at The Cellar, a club in downtown Ft. Worth, where agents, some directly responsible for the safety of President Kennedy during the motorcade, drank until dawn on November 22. He also ordered a perplexed agent Donald Lawton off the back of the presidential limousine while at Love Field, thus giving the assassins clearer, more direct shots and more time to get them off. Also, although Roberts recognized rifle fire being discharged in Dealey Plaza, he neglected to mobilize any of the agents under his watch to act. To mask the inactivity of his agents, Roberts, in sworn testimony, falsely increased the speed of the cars (from 9–11 mph to 20–25 mph) and the distance between them (from five feet to 20–25 feet).85 No analysis of the Secret Service’s actions on the day of the assassination can be complete without mentioning that Secret Service director James Rowley was a former FBI agent and close ally of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as a crony of Lyndon Johnson. Hoover was one of Johnson’s closest associates. The FBI Director would take the unusual step of flying to Dallas for a victory celebration in 1948 when Johnson illegally stole his Senate seat through election fraud. Johnson and Hoover were neighbors in the Foxhall Road area of the District of Columbia. Hoover’s budget would virtually triple during the years LBJ dominated the appropriations process as Senate Majority Leader. Rowley was a protégé of the director and one of the few men who left the FBI on good terms with Hoover. Rowley’s first public service job in the Roosevelt administration was arranged for him by LBJ. The neglect of assigning even one Secret Service agent to secure Dealey Plaza, as well as cleaning blood and other relatable pieces of evidence from the presidential limousine immediately following the assassination, seizing Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital to prevent a proper, well-documented autopsy, failing to record Oswald’s interrogation—all were important pieces of the assassination deftly executed by Rowley.

If he ever grew to understand himself, Hugo decided, it would be a miracle of the first order. Not

with a cluster of other servants.

of

to transfer her rage after all. She wanted David Price dead. And then, for the first time, she truly understood Griffin. And then, for the first time, she had an inkling of an idea. The front door opened and shut. Laurie, who had gone out to get the mail, walked into the family room, sifting through the pile. She came

dark side took over, and things got…out of hand. He always felt bad afterward. But while Martin

What if I should drop the ring?" Cyril asked on the way to the church. Surely one of the functions of the best man - the principal function, in fact - was the calm the nerves of the bridegroom. "Then you crawl around on the floor until you recover it," Percy said. "It will not happen." "I have never done this before," Cyril added. "Neither have I," Percy told him.

There is no such thing as a bad book, I just like some books more than others… - Chris Geiger

Observations often tell you more about the observer than the observed. - Chris Geiger

If you really want to make a friend, go round someone's house with a freshly baked loaf of sourdough bread! - Chris Geiger

Having work published using a pseudonym is so refreshing, its like a witness protection for victims of cyberbullying! - Chris Geiger

Nothing is candid if you believe in destiny! - Chris Geiger

Those who know you don’t need explanations, those who don’t won't believe you. - Chris Geiger

A picture is a picture, it doesn't matter what camera you use!" - Chris Geiger

was made up of choices, all of which, even the smallest, made all the difference to the rest of one’s life.

Survivors aren’t superheroes who vanquish adversity every time and live happily ever after. If you think they’re always triumphant, you’re wrong. They’re regular people who win some and lose some. They share a mind-set but they don’t all possess the same personality. They overcome adversity but they don’t necessarily accomplish it the same way. They aren’t always adaptable and optimistic; they feel stuck and gloomy, too.

nearest their window was horribly visible

of the prominent community leaders around here are up to their necks in organized crime, but they’re hard to nail down. I call ’em the Godfathers. Let me take a look and I’ll call you back.” He called her twenty minutes later. “I don’t see anything here. That doesn’t mean there isn’t something

But if we all avoided doing anything for which we are not exceptionally gifted, we would do almost nothing at all and would never discover what we can become. Instead we would waste much of the span of life allotted us in keeping safe, confining activities.

He would do anything to put things right for her, though he knew from experience that no one could ever put someone else's life to rights. One could only listen and encourage and love. And hold when holding was appropriate.

Experience had taught him that silence often drew confidences when the other person obviously had something on his or her mind.

one must not give in to defeat after just one try, or even, perhaps, after twenty.

If we can only face our worst fears and move forward into them and through them instead of cowering or turning tail and running as far from them as we can, then we will never have to fear anything ever again.

It is what we do with the pain, though, how we allow it to shape our character and actions and relationships that matters.

We were initiated into a club we did not ask to join and could not leave.

For heaven’s sake, was there anything of value in the Y chromosome? One ounce of intelligence to go with all that raging testosterone?

find

God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivors’ Club wasn’t something you “earned,” but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother’s womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: The nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people’s, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains . . . at the core, it was all the same.

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as the Links, the Knickerbocker, and the New York Athletic Club continued to exclude Jews from membership.

How easy it is to dismiss the outer packaging without an inkling that one is thereby missing the precious beauty within.” His

Maybe the Survivors’ Club wasn’t something you “earned,” but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother’s womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: The nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people’s, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains . . . at the core, it was all the same. And there was no opt-out clause in the club’s bylaws—unless you offed yourself. The essential truth of life, he was coming to realize, wasn’t romantic and took only two words to label: Shit. Happens.

I would happily spend every minute of my future hearing about every minute of his past.

There is a terrible pain,' she said softly, 'about being abandoned by someone who loves someone else more than you. A pain and an emptiness and a determination never again to give anyone that power.

They knew only how to see what was wrong in their lives and in the world and never what was right. And that was precisely what she was doing now when thinking of them, Gwen realized with a mental shake of the head. Negativity could be frighteningly contagious.

Your dog has not lost any time in catching up on his beauty sleep.” “Just do not utter any word that begins with w,” she said, “especially with the letters a-l-k attached. You would soon discover how deeply asleep he is.

Do you have anyone in mind, Hugo?” the duke asked. “Not really.” Hugo sighed. “I have an army of female cousins and aunts who would be only too

It is a dreary world out there. It makes one thankful after all to be indoors with a fire burning in the hearth.

For the unhappy truth is that I am the survivor of a shipwrecked life.

For the unhappy truth is that I am the survivor of a shipwrecked life. I’m a castaway who has washed up on your shore without craft, without hope,

We normally know we're getting older, when the only thing we want for our birthday, is not to be reminded; unless you're a cancer survivor, then we love being reminded!

Sam writes in her funny, fascinating memoir, Not By Accident.

I figured out that letting ‘the world’ hurt me served a few functions extremely well: It provided me with a kind of nurturing I didn’t otherwise know how to attract, I couldn’t be pinned with total responsibility, and it provided physical pain, a reason to cry that others could understand. So much easier than trying to explain all the accumulated rage and numbness and sadness.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty. —ELIE WIESEL

Fourth, lucky people have a special ability to turn bad luck into good fortune. Of all four defining factors involved in luck, Wiseman believes this one plays the most important role in survival.

They even come equipped with a built-in antibiotic called squalamine that helps them resist infections.

When you can’t fight or flee,” she says, “you flow.

My definition of survivor encompasses people going through difficult times and also the friends and family who stand beside them. In the cancer community, they’re called cosurvivors or secondary patients.

But at the bottom,” he writes in his powerful memoir Den of Lions, “in surrender so complete there is no coherent thought, no real pain, no feeling, just exhaustion, just waiting, there is something else. Warmth/light/softness. Acceptance, by me, of me. Rest. After a while, some strength. Enough, for now.

The third rule underscores the Japanese proverb that adversity makes a jewel of you.

My patients are people who live on the edge of survival and beyond,” he writes in his excellent book Surviving the Extremes.

In February 1982, Uli Hoeness was the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed three of his best friends. ‘That day, the sunny boy in me died,’ Hoeness later said, but people who know him well claim it was rather the egotist in him that died. Under his guidance, Bayern slowly and often secretly would now also become what the writer Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling has called a ‘welfare organisation’. No German club played more benefits and did more to raise money for those in need than Bayern. And when Markus Babbel left the club for Liverpool under less than amicable circumstances in 2000, he always let it be known he would never speak badly of Hoeness. ‘Among the top clubs in Europe, Bayern are the most humane,’ Babbel said. ‘They have always shown generosity when there were problems. Take Alan McInally, who became an invalid and didn’t have any insurance. The club said: we’ll give you severance pay. They practically gifted him the money. Our business manager is somebody you can talk to about such things.

the Shitstorm Survivors’ Club.

Geniuses and visionaries, artists and scientists, independent minds in labs and garrets – they’re the ones who made the difference to history. Not the governments. Not the companies. And certainly not the crowds.

You can’t change the world, but you can improve a bit of it a little at a time.

If you have cancer, The Cancer Survivors Club is looking for new members. We're waiting for you.

It had been Ink who had drawn out the original tree that represented Czar in their colors. That sturdy trunk with many roots. The seventeen branches represented the survivors. In the original drawing there had been eighteen branches. The crowd were the children they had tried to save--Steele has tried to save. The skulls rolling in the roots represented the men and women they had killed in order to survive--or the ones they killed to exact vengeance for those children who had never left their prison.