Hoda Kotb Quotes

In my life, I've dealt with tragedy.

Pain is one of the unavoidable facts of life. We Bidens have had our share. We don't pretend otherwise. And we don't pretend that we are different from families all over America that have to face the loss of loved ones or have to deal with the fallout of divorces.

I think everybody has their pain. For me, the time that I really had to grow up was when I was 15 and I had my best friend die of leukemia. Watching somebody so strong go through that is definitely something that will give you a little bit of depth. There have been a lot of things that have happened in my life that has forced me to grow up.

When people go through tragic circumstances, it's not that there is no love there, but it's so hard to deal with and sometimes the gap starts to happen.

Life is about surviving loss.

They always say, 'Time heals.' But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before.

First of all, a lot of people, a lot of women and men, have lost their children. I'm not the only one. But I happen to be blessed that my son gave me all these things to work with so that I get to work out my grief in a way that other people are not able to. So I can't possibly be downtrodden about that.

I lost my father when I was four, so maybe that was always in the background. Losing my brother kicked it into overdrive. When you get to such an intense place of suffering, you either have the choice to continue suffering or figure a way not to.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.

Sometimes -- she knows this from her own life -- to get to the other side, you must travel through grief. No detours are possible.

It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it's not so overwhelming.

The first time my father woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me he was going to die, I think I was eight. He brought out all his papers and explained to me what to do with his body and who to call and how to take care of things. You either learn how to survive, or you fall to pieces. I'm pretty good at surviving.

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

When things happen to you in the worst way, you live with it, you go over it, you think, 'What else could I have done?'

I think everyone understands grief, the journey it takes us on, whether it's the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a disappointment. Some people don't deal with it, the power of it. Some do. Some feel the weight of it and it informs their choices. I've had to open up to grief in different contexts.

I've been through cancer, divorce, loss and bereavement, but they are things most humans go through.

I get painted quite a bit as a tragic figure because of some of the stuff that's happened in my life.

I don't deal with death very well. My brother, John Candy, my dad, my mom, Brandon Tartikoff just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, you lose a lot of people in your life, and that's one thing I am constantly working on - pain management.

Because I had a lot of emotional upheaval in my life, I'm attracted to stories about characters whose lives are full of wounds and secrets. I'm not interested in who's going to ask me to the prom. I never went to a prom.

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

It was all devastating. I'd never dealt with losing anyone close to me, and I didn't know where to put it in my life. I was very young then. Buddy taught me so much in such a short time.

Most people are remarkably resilient. Even those who have been through war or great loss often find reservoirs of strength. But the legacy of trauma is a heavy burden to bear.

It's important to wallow and grieve when you have a health issue. I don't think you really get the best stuff out of life until you've had the worst stuff.

No one ever tells you what the grieving process is going to be like. The process of losing a parent or ending a show or vocal injuries - they all bring on their own special breed of dismay... You just have to ride the wave. You don't have any other choice.