Robin McKinley 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.

I do what I've got to do to survive, to keep my teeth in my head, and my head on my shoulders. I apologize to whoever can't put that together and understand that.

I think that everybody does hustle in order to survive. That doesn't mean lying - it's more about how you handle situations.

But what is to be done? Is it possible to infect ourselves on purpose just in order to have the satisfaction of dying beautifully and tranquilly? No! What is to be done? We must live while we are alive, eat dry bread if there is no roast beef, know many women if it is not possible to love a woman, and, in general, we must not dream about orange trees and palms, when under foot are snowdrifts and the cold tundra.

Necessity does the work of courage.

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

The first few years in L.A. were really tough and scary, but I had to figure things out for myself.

I learned a lot in those first years in Miami, while struggling just for survival, by observing my father's fortitude.

Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

But we did the best we could and in the end some of us had to get day jobs and start fresh.

When one must, one can.

You cannot survive in our part of the world unless you have a certain amount of optimism.

Everyone does what they believe they need to do in order to survive in this business, 'survive' being the operative word.

It's the way of life in Saginaw. If you're not tough, you don't survive.

We were an underprivileged family. My parents were both tailors. We got by. But we only had a few important things in our life.

My biggest inspiration has been life for me. Basic survival has been my biggest teacher. Surviving in Mumbai for so many years has been a huge ordeal.

This is the land of getting over. The land of second or even third chances; the land of doing whatever you have to do by any means necessary in order to fulfill the American Dream.

Early in my career I had to be a goon to survive. I did everything I had to do and probably some things I shouldn't have.

But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest.

A man could get used to anything if he had to.

New York is just New York. It's a hard city, it's a hard city to live in. It's a desperate city. It's filled with scam artists and people who are always looking for a way in and a way out and the majority of people have to really negotiate their way through that jungle to get to the other side; the other side being a place of tranquility and peace and home and safety.

Hope is the poor man's bread.

Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do.