#viva

Flexibility is a requirement for survival. ↗

— Roger von Oech

#flexibility #happiness #life #survival #thinking

Such is the privilege of survival: to be allowed to fashion the means that fit our ends, to cobble together a narrative that reveals (as by the divine light of illumination) the predestined arc of our days. This is no small gift. With it we can neutralize all but the greatest losses, reduce even the greatest bastards to nothing more than bit actors in the drama of our lives, put on this earth for the sole purpose of forwarding our cause. Blessed are those who can believe their own stories. ↗

— Mark Slouka

#survival #life

When I was thinking about How Poetry Saved My Life entering the “big literary world” I more so viewed it as sub genre or an underdog book because there are still comparatively so few books about sex work, especially from authors who once worked street, like I have. Disclosing to working street-level sex work still feels risky to me. Apart from Runaway by Evelyn Lau (published in 1989) I have yet to read a first person memoir about street work. More of these stories must be out there—perhaps I just haven’t found them yet. ↗

— Amber Dawn

#street-sex-work #survival-sex-work #life

Loving someone always requires you to not love others. ↗

— Koushun Takami

#survival #love

Knowing that this is what it means to live. That this love, this need is what drives us to push and fight and build and grow. That as long as there's hope and love in this world, there will always be the living. ↗

— Carrie Ryan

#survival #love

Given the choice, a yeast cell's ideal state is to be diploid. But if it's in an environment with a lack of nutrients, you know what happens? The diploids break into haploids again. Solitary little haploids. Because, in a crisis, it's easier to survive as a single cell. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#survival #marriage

I felt so much more than horror. I was so afraid, shocked by what I saw. There were hundreds of men, women and children hanging from the trees ... there was blood everywhere! We all saw that every person had been gutted, like a fish. My instinct was to run, but where to ... I was on a train. As I watched those around me on the train, so many others also looked like they had explosions in their eyes and they too wanted to flee. ↗

— Alfred Nestor

#alfred-nestor #author-alfred-nestor #hitler #hitler-s-germany #nazi-party

The train, I was later told by my mother, only had about ten carriages to it, and there were hundreds of people fighting to get on. I don’t think anybody knew where the train was going, only that it was leaving Strausberg and would take us away from the Russians, who were now arriving on the far end of the platform. Some German SS soldiers and Police were shooting at the Russian troops, and many people – men, women and children – were hit by the flying bullets. ↗

— Alfred Nestor

#alfred-nestor #author-alfred-nestor #hitler #hitler-s-germany #nazi-party

War makes animals of men, and we can't let that happen to us. If we do, we won't have any chance of survival. ↗

— Shannon A. Thompson

#survival #war #men

The truth is, living in any society is difficult. Those who become desperate with a fractured sense of security are much more prone to being taken advantaged of. ↗

— John-Talmage Mathis

#money #society #survival #money