Thomas Harris Quotes

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

Women shouldn't be burdened by what existed in their past, we should all learn how to turn pain into strength.

Loss brings pain. Yes. But pain triggers memory. And memory is a kind of new birth, within each of us. And it is that new birth after long pain, that resurrection - in memory - that, to our surprise, perhaps, comforts us.

And all the things that break you are all the things that make you strong. You can't change the past 'Cause it's gone, and you just gotta move on.

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

The beauty's in the scars.

For people like me, who have blocked out a chunk of their past, you wonder - if you open that door, if you walk into that room of your memories, what will happen? Will it destroy you or will it make you stronger?

Heartbreak is hard, but you find more and more things to be grateful for every day.

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

My life has crept so long on a broken wing Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear, That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing.

A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.

I'm grateful for every scar, some pages turned, some bridges burned, but there were lessons learned

I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability.

I'm not insecure. I've been through way too much f**king sh*t to be insecure. I've got huge balls. But I've been humbled. That makes you grateful for every day you have.

This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.

To be alive at all is to have scars.

All of us heal in time. The strongest are born again. We only keep the scars we choose to keep.

Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you've endured. They're a treasure map to the deep self.

One of the advantages of having lived a long time is that you can often remember when you had it worse. I am grateful to have lived long enough to have known some of the blessings of adversity.

Sometimes we forget to be grateful until we survive a trauma. For example, after having the flu when you ache all over, throw up for hours, and have little people pounding in your head with hammers, it is sheer bliss just to eat a piece of toast, walk outside without getting dizzy, and breathe fresh air. Part of the journey toward joy involves not waiting around for trouble, but being continuously aware of our blessings.

You are not defined by your past. You are prepared by your past.

Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.

We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.

It's hard to tell our good luck sometimes. Hard to tell sometimes for many years to come. And most of us have wept copious tears over someone or something, when if we'd understood the situation better, we might have celebrated our good fortune insteadOne can never change the past, only the hold it has on you and while nothing in your life is reversible, you can reverse it nevertheless.