Elizabeth Strout Quotes

People say, That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn't kill you doesn't kill you. That's all you get. Sometimes, you just have to hope that's enough.

To be fully human is...to know that it's possible to face the unimaginable and somehow put one foot in front of the other.

Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes, but I'll work it out.

Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain... Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore... Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.

Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.

If you're actually talking to someone who's been through a disastrous number of years, that only means one thing: They survived it.

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'm a survivor - a living example of what people can go through and survive.

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

What I learned for myself... is that no matter what the circumstances, people survive.

The only thing I know how to do is survive.

The stuff I've seen and lived and survived. Gun to my head, cops coming to your house. I had the confidence of telling myself that I'm going to make it. Everything I've been through, I could've had a mental breakdown, but I kept it together. If I didn't have that confidence I wouldn't have made it. That confidence has nothing to do with basketball.

Carry on, carry on, what don't kill us makes us strong.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.

The key to success is to keep your head above the water.

I shake my head, but I can’t change this. I can only bear the scars, as I have always done, as I ever do.

Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.

I like to keep my issues drawn, it's always darkest before the dawn.

The ups and downs, the problems and stress, along with all the happiness, have given me optimism and hope because I am living proof of survival.

Even in that time of utter darkness, somewhere deep inside me the memory of love and goodness had stayed alive.

This is an important lesson to remember when you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won't feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most.

There remain times when one can only endure. One lives on, one doesn't die, and the only thing that one can do, is to fill one's mind and time as far as possible with the concerns of other people. It doesn't bring immediate peace, but it brings the dawn nearer.

But...as bad as it was, I learned something about myself. That I could go through something like that and survive. I mean, I know it could have been worse--a lot worse-- but for me, it was all I could have handled at the time. And I learned from it.

Because all my life I've learned to suffer in silence - Athena