Caryl Chessman Quotes

How can they beat me? I've been struck by lightning, had two back operations, and been divorced twice.

How many times can a man go down and still be alive?

I have a different kind of experience than other girls had. I've had to face a lot of different styles and adjust to them. I had to face a lot of bad situations and come back. I've had to fight with my eyes swollen shut and my nose broken and bloody.

I've never stabbed, hurt, killed, stolen, anything, but I went to jail for a year. What is that? My pastor said to me the fact that I'm not living under a bridge as a crazy woman, talking to myself, is amazing.

In Kurdistan, there's a lot of hardship - a lot of wars, a lot of bitter and difficult lifestyles. And witnessing all those made me a director.

I think I'm a survivor. I could have suffered at least 100 professional deaths. I could come up with a list of the 100 times I've come closest to death, from having pneumonia as a child to car crashes.

I have survived and possibly I should not hope for more than that.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive.

I've lived through a lifetime of crises and survived.

All I'm trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.

I know that I'm very lucky to be alive. For 35 or 40 years I've spilt my blood and broke my bones and spent years in hospitals.

Even as a child, I found a way to survive.

Man. I've been through a lot as a kid. But at the same time that upbringing just made me stronger and made me more determined to make it out of where I made it out from and just fight extra hard to not go back.

I've been through hell not totally unscathed, but I came out not too bad.

The only thing I know how to do is survive.

I fought for my survival since infancy.

When you grow up hard, when you grow up surviving, unfortunately, it helps.

When you grow up in poverty and learn how to survive it, it's something that stays with you forever.

If I can make it through homelessness, I can make it through anything.

I want to share the things I've done, the things I've survived, the things I've struggled through.

My girls had to grow up quick because of everything we've been through.

I was very lucky that I didn't end up a basket case.

I have been in lots of very intense life situations. I have been shot at, and I have been hungry, and I have been in solitude, and I have also briefly been behind bars. So in a way, I know the heart of men.

I've been through hell. It's hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden - was it a lie? You're struggling because it wasn't real. But I survived. It was hard, but it didn't kill me.