Susannah Cahalan Quotes

The greatest achievement of my life is enduring a disease that nearly killed me. I came out of it a better person. It's my one great accomplishment - more so than anything else I've done.

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

If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. It's the people who are always on the brink of crisis who don't hit bottom who are in trouble.

I got sick when I was 19, and I'd been a really healthy 19-year-old, so I don't have a lot to compare it to. Does it feel like the pain after you give birth? I don't know.

I don't want fear or cancer to define me, but it's always in the back of your mind.

The darkest experiences in a human being's life allow that person to either go deeper and stay depressed or get the strength to stand up stronger than ever, and that's my case.

If I'm going to be a pessimist, then I should just stop writing for young people because that's too heavy a burden to put on young readers. But also, I get to meet with people who have waded through horrible things, and they get up every morning, and they try to do their best.

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

I felt that, in some ways, my novels lacked heart because of the distance between me and the subject matter. But no one wants to read a book based on good health, a happy upbringing, a long marriage.

I can't believe I survived, not only my life, but I am still playing football 'cause half of those eight or nine years I don't even remember.

I lost my son in late 2011. He had been totally incapacitated from his neck down for the last eight years of his life, but his mind was alive and brilliant in those years. He even wrote a book, 'Allegheny Mountain,' lying at home in his hospital bed.

Sometimes it's been difficult to stay positive, especially after the injuries that I've had, which have been frustrating.

Music has empowered me through poverty, abuse, and mental-health issues.

My story is just my story, and it's not nearly as traumatic as some.

I think there's a lot of people going through different things where you feel like your whole world's imploded, and you feel like you lost it all, whether it's physical, emotional, whatever you're going through. If I can be that beacon of hope for people that need it the most through dancing and through our storytelling, then I've done my job.

It's so weird, like, it's not like Gamergate is the only bad thing to happen to me. I've been homeless before, I've had to come through other stuff. A profoundly abusive childhood, but at least that stuff feels like I got to move on from it, that stuff is in the past.

The accident for sure was one of the most important experiences of my life. During the course of my rehabilitation I had people who were exactly what I needed to be inspired.

I was very lucky that I didn't end up a basket case.

Anyone who is dealing with any issue or any illness whatsoever, without a support network, chances are the person will not survive.

Within my first year of moving abroad living on my own, my sister got ill - she got cancer - and at the same time, my mum got cancer, and she passed away. I think at that time it was a hard challenge for me to deal with it, but in a way, I have always taken strength out of anything that has come at me.

I went through a pretty serious illness early in my life and I made a movie about that.

There is this old thing that a lot of people say - that the worst experiences make the best films. I don't subscribe to it. But I've seen it happen.

I consider myself a survivor more than anything else.

I can't imagine trying to be in recovery. I mean it would be hard enough with just life going along in a nice way, but then when awful stuff happens, how you maintain the strength to get through it?

Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin.