Edwidge Danticat Quotes

people are strong despite suffering, not because of it.

We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. It’s easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but when I am weak, then I am strong.

You can look at my palm and see the storm coming. Read the book of my life and see I've overcome it.

I didn't know why God had chose me for this ordeal, but I was somehow suited to it and knew that I would see it through to the end.

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.

What I learned for myself... is that no matter what the circumstances, people survive.

Sometimes it looks like God's abandoned you, but not for any reason. To make your faith grow and to see that, no matter what happens, you come out OK... It's all for your good. It's all for love, and it's all for making you a strong person.

I believe that no matter what you believe, you're going to go through hard times.

It's interesting to see people overcome things. Because if you didn't overcome, you wouldn't be writing it.

There are those who suffer and grow strong; there are those who suffer and grow weak. This mystery of pain is still for me the saddest of earth's disabilities.

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good.

People say, That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn't kill you doesn't kill you. That's all you get. Sometimes, you just have to hope that's enough.

What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened - how did you live life then? You had to hand it to Theo Wyre, just carrying on living required a strength and courage that most people didn't have.

We are like the herb which flourisheth most when it is most trampled on.

The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. And they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.

In terrible moments, in moments of revolution, of war or repression, of illness or death, people react with incredible strength.

People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.

Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.

It's catastrophies which turn wise and strong people into philosophers.

It is only the strong who are strengthened by suffering; the weak are made weaker.

Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long.

Life has a way of breaking even the strongest among us.

Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone.

I AM VERY MOVED BY SURVIVORS. BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW TO OVERCOME A HANDICAP, A SITUATION, OR ANYTHING. VISITING THE HEARTS AND SOULS OF THOSE PEOPLE TEACHES ME A LOT ABOUT HUMANS AND HUMANITY.