Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

It takes an extraordinary toll on me to re-live my experiences, the horrors of my past and the pain I had to endure. And yet, I believe remembering is the only way to promote healing, to promote awareness and accountability.

Certainly after the tragedy in Neil's life, we were holding out hope for his recovery. It wasn't too promising at the time and obviously you get to the point of thinking that that is it.

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.

We're all painfully aware of how suddenly violence can occur, how crippling it is, and how survivors have to find a way back from that.

When I was 19 years old, both of my parents died in the same year; my mom of cancer and my dad in a car accident. Through the next two or three years and a series of bad decisions - all my own, I might add - I ended up literally homeless, before that was even a word. I even slept occasionally under a pier on the Gulf Coast.

I have been touched by extreme violence, and I have been robbed of the life I always wanted by someone who chose to do evil.

Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.

I don't think I've ever put it in words before. But daddy took a gun and ended his life and took momma's with him.

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.

Teenagers too often have to deal with loss and death. You had to cope with the untimely death of your brother; how can young people deal with such tragedies?

It takes only one person with a weapon to shatter a life, a family, a community.

It's a hard thing to imagine how somebody copes with grief and at the same time has to build a new life.

When you suffer a tragedy, the secondary loss of having it bleed into other areas of your life is so real.

I have suffered most of the things I write about - or my friends have.

There's many, many people who have been through a lot worse things than I went through. I lost my dad when I was 14 and to violence.

My mom got shot. My dad got shot. Some of the craziest stuff. All that happened to me.

Grief is a very strange thing. It can affect you in all kinds of ways. I lost a year. I've done a lot of therapy and it's great to be back on the horse.

Some people lose a whole world to grief sometimes, while others just don't grieve. Sometimes we're just too scared to face our emotions.

Everybody's darkness is different. My darkness came from my mom having pancreatitis and almost dyin'. And what I noticed was that the darkness ain't goin' nowhere.

We know the Victorian way of dealing with death, which was not dealing with it. You'll never get over it but having the support of a counsellor who has been there hundreds of times is so important, to help you develop strategies to cope.

Grief is a very scary thing, and there comes a point where it can really take you down.

Cancer is awful. It took 10 years until I didn't think about it every day. Nobody should go through this. Nobody.

My grandfather's death was really hard to deal with.

I remember burying a girl fourteen years of age who had died with a ruptured appendix... I buried a good many people that I knew, some of whom I loved.

When my father died in my arms it had such a profound affect on me that at that very moment when my dad passed I realized that I needed to face my own fears.