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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Negativity could be frighteningly contagious.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

Sometimes sexuality was more compelling when it was not overt.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The future would take care of itself.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.