Jenny Zhang Quotes

All I'm trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.

When you grow up in poverty and learn how to survive it, it's something that stays with you forever.

When you have a situation that's destructive, when there's tremendous inhumanity everywhere, you see how humanity survives in all of its different permutations.

The miseries of the Indonesian people are sandwiched between two thick slabs of bread—one the bread of hope, the other the bread of patience

I'm from Colombia, and we've been through a lot of hard situations.

I speak to people who have been through so much more.

Ghettos and barrios and abusive homes and trauma wards may produce scarred souls; they can cripple more human spirits than they strengthen.

I came out even with all the struggles I endured on Rikers Island.

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, 'I'm an orphan again today, isn't this terrible? Poor me.'

And when you're poor, you grow up fast.

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

Picture me inside the misery of poverty, no man alive has ever witnessed struggles ive survived, praying hard for better days promised to hold on me and my dogs aint have a choice but to hold on.

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

I have a different kind of experience than other girls had. I've had to face a lot of different styles and adjust to them. I had to face a lot of bad situations and come back. I've had to fight with my eyes swollen shut and my nose broken and bloody.

It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.

I've never stabbed, hurt, killed, stolen, anything, but I went to jail for a year. What is that? My pastor said to me the fact that I'm not living under a bridge as a crazy woman, talking to myself, is amazing.

I've experienced poverty and plenty, and there's a lesson to be learned when you're brought up in poverty.

In Kurdistan, there's a lot of hardship - a lot of wars, a lot of bitter and difficult lifestyles. And witnessing all those made me a director.

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

I don't consider myself a survivor; that's someone who has gone through something terrible.

We might experience bad things in our lives. But if we worship a God who suffered more than us, this is our highest example. And there are lots of challenges in our lives. This does not mean we give up.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

Deliverance is about what I went through the first time. And I chalk it up as a learning experience.

You grow up skinny in Canada; in working-class Montreal, you're definitely the underdog.