Chris Cleave Quotes

We can take suffering to be an opportunity to learn and to grow. But if we are honest, we should remember that this is making the best of a bad job, and that minimising suffering takes priority over optimising its outcome.

When people are in the midst of really heavy stuff and still have a sense of humor, I admire that.

I think you can be depressed and flourish, I think you can have cancer and flourish, I think you can be divorced and flourish. When we believed that happiness was only smiling and good mood, that wasn't very good for people like me, people in the lower half of positive affectivity.

I love to smile, even through pain.

I learnt in South America and in Africa that people who have really big problems in the ghetto always keep a sense of humour and remain positive. If not, you go down.

My worst day, I'm just going to try and smile.

I'm, by nature, a really optimistic person. It goes back to my parents having been each divorced three times and my finding some way to survive all that. I always managed to survive by being upbeat.

No matter what else you came up against, if you could smile and laugh while a monkey did you with chestnuts in a dank concrete basement while somebody took pictures, well, any other situation would be a piece of cake

You're never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that.

I've met a lot of people who've lost their jobs and they still have a sense of humor.

I can't understand people who give up and commit suicide. If I have a bad day, I figure tomorrow will be better. And even if it isn't, at least it isn't any worse.

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.

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

I'm not this callous clown walking around laughing at life all the time. I've had some serious, serious problems in my life. But I've come out with a smile.

A lot of tragedy can befall us, but there's always something else; there's always hope.

People in tough times - it doesn't mean they don't have a great attitude.

When life knocks you down, keep getting up.

I've had to learn to fight all my life - got to learn to keep smiling. If you smile things will work out.

I may have some things tougher than the average person, but there are a lot of people who are going through worse things than me. I can't live in fear.

While I've had plenty of ups and downs, dealt with my share of failure, and struggled through emotionally difficult periods, I'm fundamentally an optimist.

Through all the hardships and all the operations and all the hospitals, all that stuff each part of my life, there's been some goodness, some greatness that comes in here and helps me to be strong, to continue what I'm doing.

You've got to learn to laugh in the face of adversity.

I'm not going to lie: it's tough. There were a couple of games where you're down, and you're in a really dark place, and you don't know if you're ever going to come out of it. You realize, 'Hey, I'm having a bad day,' but you realize there are people out there having worse days.

My smile will always be broken, but I'll always be grateful for the chance to get to do what I get to do.