Nick Flynn Quotes

Ultimately, I am responsible for how I live my life now, and what I make out of it. In fact, I am actually grateful for what I've gone through and wouldn't change a thing-although I admit I wouldn't want to live it over again either. Once was enough.

I've been through some very difficult stages in my life, but I wouldn't change anything.

You meet a lot of people and have a lot of experiences, and they color you and stay with you - but I'm not the grieving widow. Life is much more complicated and interesting and full of zigs and zags than that.

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.

I generally don't like it when people talk about regrets because you do your best, and you deal with the circumstances that happen.

Nothing changes what alreaday happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.

Nothing will prepare you for singing the truth like about 35 years in the music business, financial troubles and a couple trips to jail, ... It will get you really humble and really truthful, and gets you ready to sing out about who and what saved you.

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.\

the most terribly human moments - the ones we want to pretend never happened - are the very moments that make us who we are today. ... You are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them.

One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.

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

I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Lived it and I'm still here to talk about it and help someone else if I can.

When I think of what has happened in a larger sense, beyond myself, then I would not change anything.

Sometimes you surprise yourself with what you can handle, and if you come out the other end with some wisdom, then it's not such a bad thing.

When you finally understand who you are, ages 6 through 60 will understand who you are. Because when they see a person that's come through all that I've come through, still standing, it's amazing.

I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

I've experienced great things, I've experienced great tragedies. I've done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there's more.

I count life just a stuff to try the soul's strength on.

I'm not the kind of person to sit and dwell for ages on something that happened. I go through something, I experience it, I try to learn from it, and I move forward.

My journey through life has led me through both light and dark places, and it's because of those experiences that I have learned how to work through my character defects and to help others do the same.

Everything that happens to me in my life, be it good or bad, it's all education, and it's important for that to become part of what you do. It all feeds the beast.

Everything I have experienced in my life helps form who I am today, and I would not change or forget any of it.

It has been an interesting road, but I wouldn't trade any of it for the world, because I feel like all of those instances in my life I felt molded me and strengthened me and made me who I am.

As a novelist, I have always been interested in how people come to terms with difficult, life-altering events.