James Surowiecki Quotes

If you woke up, every day, and someone punched you in the face, for the first week, you'd go, 'Why is someone punching me in the face?' But, by the time you got through week two, you'd take it and just go on with the day.

After awhile you could get used to anything.

It's amazing what you can learn to get used to.

Today, I don't have any psychological scars, because I am a realist and an optimist. After all, I can't lose my legs twice.

You can get used to anything, I guess, if you've been there enough.

There are terrible things that never get easier, and there are things even more terrible that get easier with time and repetition.

There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.

Being in a wheelchair for 30 years. I'm not whining about it because I don't dwell on things I can't do anything about, you know. I never really think about until somebody mentions it. I did take a bullet.

I find titles the hardest thing. I was worried that 'Waste Land' was too much of a downer. For me, 'The Crash Reel' confronts what the film is about: it's not just about the reality of a crash, it's about the extremity we all face, and what happens when life crashes on you.

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

It is wise for us to forget our troubles, there are always new ones to replace them.

The fact is that trauma and risk taking hadn't become scarier over the years; it had become more normal.

Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.

Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

I had a husband who stayed with me, and small children, and I had no choice but to pull myself together and rebuild a different kind of life. There was no other choice.

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.

Well, I'm using a cane, so what? So what if they shot me sitting in a wheelchair? That's life!

People ask, how do you cope, and all I can say is that you do.

I have never been one to run when tragedy strikes.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

Learn to get used to it. Eels get used to skinning.

… there isn’t anything you can’t stand if you are only born and bred to it..

Custom turns everything upside down. Give it time, and what can resist its hardening effect? What does not yield to use? How many find that the bitterness they had formerly dreaded has, unfortunately, through use alone, turned to sweetness?

If nothing else, we simply get used to being alive.