James A. Michener Quotes

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping.

It's a healthy thing to get some bad criticism. I'm still here and I'm fine, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't get to you reading the negative stuff.

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive.

The only thing I know how to do is survive.

When you grow up hard, when you grow up surviving, unfortunately, it helps.

The stuff I've seen and lived and survived. Gun to my head, cops coming to your house. I had the confidence of telling myself that I'm going to make it. Everything I've been through, I could've had a mental breakdown, but I kept it together. If I didn't have that confidence I wouldn't have made it. That confidence has nothing to do with basketball.

I have a feeling that once you live through something like this, you become a little bit invincible.

My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.

I had a very rough childhood and not a happy one and by age 15 I was an old person in many ways. I knew that I had to take care of myself, I um and I always did.

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.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I really believe that.

I think it's an amazing quality to be able to roll with the punches and not be totally ruined as a person because life's been rough for you. That's a really admirable way to go through your life.

You slam the bottom and either walk away or suck it up and get through it.

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.

When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly, everything feels easier.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

I grew up very poor in a fractured family that was dysfunctional on both sides, but I sort of put up these reflectors to most of the negative things that have occurred in my life. I don't carry around much baggage.

I don't think that you can let the storms of life overwhelm you. When you do that, you are no better than the craziness that caused you to be under attack.

I've overcome neglect and deprivation, abandonment and abuse.

I'm attracted to subjects who overcome tremendous suffering and learn to cope emotionally with it.

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

We imagine things - that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. We have no choice, so we do it.

Nothing in baseball can bring me down to the level where I was growing up in Pine Bluff, crying and broke. This is fun for me. Whenever you see me slumping, nah, I don't get upset; I'm all right.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.