Daniel Handler Quotes

It's amazing how resourceful you can become when you're in the middle of the ocean and there's only one way to get to the other side.

If something goes wrong, don’t whine about it. Have a spine about it. Adjust, adapt, and move forward.

The greatest thing my dad taught me came from when I called him from a phone booth and said, 'Hungry. No bus token. Please. Out of options.' He said, 'Pfft, get a job.

We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another.

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

A good school teaches you resilience - that ability to bounce back.

In my life I have always found ways of dealing with a situation.

It's much more interesting to watch someone who is ill-equipped to solve their problem fight to solve their problem than wallow in the knowledge that they're ill-equipped to solve their problems.

I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.

I'm a plodder, one foot in front of the other. Life is all about understanding that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And it's your ability with how you deal with that adversity that ultimately affects your success.

I'm really not thick-skinned - my wife will tell you that I take sunsets personally - but I know that I've got the belly for whatever comes down the pike. I think it's tenacity. You've been there before, and you just have to recall, 'How did I handle that one?'

There are going to be games where you don't have the greatest conditions, so to show that you can do it in bad conditions is a plus.

Life's about dealing with adversity and solving problems.

Curiosity has ... proven to be a great ingredient in resilience, a trait particularly valuable in an extended economic downturn. Resilient people aren't made of steel; they just provide themselves with more options, and those options come from a curious mind.

I think that everybody does hustle in order to survive. That doesn't mean lying - it's more about how you handle situations.

I'm very resourceful. I'd be good in prison. I'd be good in a shipwreck. I'd make a great hostage.

What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing--a very hard thing... But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?

For me, survival is the ability to cope with difficulties, with circumstances, and to overcome them.

You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim

In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

It makes me feel resilient when you tackle different things.

Everything's not going to go perfect. You're going to have some losses that you're going to have to bounce back from and some things that are a little unforeseen that you're going to have to deal with.

If I was hearing something I couldn't do, I would figure out how to do it.