Rebecca Solnit Quotes

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.

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.

We awoke one morning in September, and the world lurched on its axis.

Countries and individuals do not change unless they undergo a trauma.

Hitting bottom and hitting it hard was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the best thing that ever happened to me.

Everyone has a rock bottom.

When things fall apart you sometimes can see more. You might even be able to see how to put things back together.

It is sure to be a year on the brink of catastrophe or rejuvenation.

There was a time when I was young and unemployed, struggling to start my career. During my A-Levels, I was hit by a car, which shattered my bones and left me confined to my bedroom for a year. Weirdly, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I have been in an experience where I thought everything that I had hoped for in my life was taken away from me, and I had to redefine what mattered.

I always tell people there's nothing greater than a crisis to create a breakthrough. Because that's when we breakthrough usually - most people don't proactively breakthrough - they breakthrough because they have to. And the beauty of crisis is it doesn't feel beautiful, is it melts us down. And when you're melted down you can recast your life in a new way.

My past made me who I am today. I can’t just pretend it never happened. But the biggest lesson I learnt from that, is that I can be an example for others who are still struggling! There’s always hope and help for everyone. I think it’s my responsibility to do that, to help. I always refer to this as the “moment of clarity”. It’s hard to explain what really happened, but it was a once in a lifetime kind of moment. I had reached my lowest point and I just knew things had to change quickly because there was just no other way, you know.

I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.

Remember,too,that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start,and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they "arrive". The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at some moment of crisis,through which they are introduced to their "other selves".

If we lose our hope, that's our real disaster!

There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, 'Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?'

No personal calamity is so crushing that something true and great can't be made of it

Despair is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one.

It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.

I've been through some very dark times in my life and I've been through those very dark times that's affected my world view, the lens that I see people through, so I can relate to that.

Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?

'Showgirls' was a critical point in my life. I had my head handed to me. At 21 years old, I had to find my self-esteem again. It was a very hard time.

Sometimes when you're overwhelmed by a situation - when you're in the darkest of darkness - that's when your priorities are reordered.

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.

Having cancer empowered me to take more risks. I knew beating cancer was going to shape me, but it wasn't going to be all of me.