Dick Clark Quotes

Being in a wheelchair for 30 years. I'm not whining about it because I don't dwell on things I can't do anything about, you know. I never really think about until somebody mentions it. I did take a bullet.

Many may look at me and see mostly what I have lost. I struggle to speak, my eyesight's not great, my right arm and leg are paralyzed, and I left a job I loved representing southern Arizona in Congress.

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

How many 54-year-old quadriplegics are putting albums out? You just have to deal with what you got, try to sustain yourself as best you can, and look to the things that you can do.

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

I think if you come from a history of persecution you have to develop a sense of humour.

I was paralyzed from the chest down when I was 19, so I kind of put my head together about dying, and I think I've come to terms with it.

If somebody would've told me that I was going to lose my legs at the age of 19, I would've thought there's absolutely no way I'd be able to handle that. But then it happened, and I realized that there's so much more to live for, that my life isn't about my legs.

Today, I don't have any psychological scars, because I am a realist and an optimist. After all, I can't lose my legs twice.

The trick was forgetting about what she had lost ...and learning to go on with what she had left.

I guess there are some things you never get used to.

I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life; they merely get used to it.

Falling down became second nature and it really didn't bother me.

I faced odds when glaucoma took the bat out of my hands. But I didn't give in or feel sorry for myself. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: 'It may be cloudy in my right eye, but the sun is shining very brightly in my left eye.'

No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Moses had one, and he did all right.

To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.

I have no choice about whether or not I have Parkinson's. I have nothing but choices about how I react to it. In those choices, there's freedom to do a lot of things in areas that I wouldn't have otherwise found myself in.

After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left.

Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.

The film 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,' based the book of the same name, has a line that enlightens and comforts me. The protagonist, who has lost all ability to move except one eye, discusses his role as a father. He notes, 'Even a fraction of a father is still a father.'

I don't have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.

I'm a survivor, at least that's what everyone tells me.

Life never works out the way you think it will. But you just have to deal with it.

I was told as a teenager that I would never walk again.