Luigi Barzini Quotes

In my stories, I controlled what happened in a way I couldn't in real life. My characters lived through the horror and degradation of the cruelty of others and they not only survived, they thrived. They gave me hope and laughter, and they kept me going in spite of everything else. They were my heroes.

I have to laugh because despite the destruction, we cannot let 'them' steal our pleasure. That is always the theme of my performances: I'm here to thrive, not just to survive.

We do not invest in victims, we invest in survivors.

If life is so critical, if Anne Frank could die, if my friend could die, children were as vulnerable as adults, and that gave me a secret purpose to my work, to make them live. Because I wanted to live. I wanted to grow up.

I see courage everywhere I go in Africa.

We were not defeated. We had been refugees. Now we were freedom fighters.

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise

I still when I wake up hit the ground running; and having an illness, I'm only one of hundreds of thousands of people that live with an illness, and I'm just in awe of the bravery and dignity of the people I see at the hospital.

Necessity makes even the timid brave.

People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.

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

A lot of kids are broken, and it's hard for them to believe in anything. But you have to have an imaginative mind and tell yourself, 'Hey, I can do whatever I want to.'

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

Rape is the most humiliating thing that can be done to you; it's the most vulnerable that you can be. But once I realized that, I became a stronger person and faced all my fears.

When you're scared, when you're hanging on, when life is hurting you, then you're going to see what you're really made of.

Human beings are remarkably resilient. When you think about it, our species has been teetering upon the edge of the existential cliff since Hiroshima. In short, we endure.

I think you make the best with what you've got, you know? Sometimes you have very little. And you just always try to rise to higher ground, because you're going to suffer one way or the other, so you just hope that you have strength and perseverance and good friends and faith, some kind of faith, to endure and move on to greener pastures.

I'm a survivor - a living example of what people can go through and survive.

We as people often subscribe to hope to feel better about our lives, to escape the harsh and sometimes cruel injustices of the world.

Even in the hardest circumstances, dreams can give you the courage to live, and I hope I can share that message with children in need.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

I'm not interested in playing the victim. I like stories about survivors.

I don't want to be remembered as the girl who was shot. I want to be remembered as the girl who stood up.

Courage conquers all things: it even gives strength to the body.

Hope is a very thin diet.