Hope Jahren Quotes

You learned that if you're tired enough, you can sleep sitting up. That the unendurable is perfectly endurable if you just take it a minute at a time, and when the alternative is no more minutes ever.

No matter how hot the fire burns, a Protea always survives

The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.

For us, it's a matter of just staying alive and getting the best deal we can now. Eventually, this will all straighten out. It may be two generations away or 10 generations away, but time is irrelevant in that sense. As long as we, as a people, stay alive, we will survive.

You have to struggle to stay alive and be of use as long as you can.

The rules of survival never change, whether you're in a desert or in an arena.

Survival is nothing more than recovery.

How are we to live with the desert, in the desert, within the desert?

Adaptation to one's environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much hardier stuff than the rest that no power on earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

It's amazing how much punishment we can take.

What may not be altered is made lighter by patience.

A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently.

Surviving, that's my plan.

The biggest failures come round and spring ultimate surprises of survival.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

Enjoy what you can, endure what you must.

I've been screwed and sued and tattooed, and I'm still standin' here in front of you.

As every cockroach knows, thriving on poisons is the secret of success.

You have to endure what you can't change.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught by a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

Surviving means being born over and over.

The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

Who speaks of conquering? To endure is everything.

Survival is the key word to remember—not victory, not conquest, just survival.

What can't be changed must be endured.