Jesmyn Ward Quotes

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

Recovery begins from the darkest moment.

The hurricane flooded me out of a lot of memorabilia, but it can't flood out the memories.

When everything in a person's life is gone, ripped-out gone, it's not that you stay empty for so long, so you replace it with something else very quickly.

The world, post-Katrina, was a hard time for my city. The hardest time. For people who didn't live through it, no words can fully express the pain, the rage, the grief, and the futility we New Orleanians felt. For the people who did, words seemed like a feeble protest against a relentless night without end.

We salvage the bones of our lives every day, through small tragedies and big tragedies.

I am here today as an example to all that have gone through a personal hell or are going through it right now, whatever that hell might be for you, that you can become whole again. In fact, you can become stronger than you ever thought possible.

Everybody has losses, and sometimes they're worse than others, but you can always bounce back.

My book 'Trust Your Heart', which is the story of my life, will be followed by 'Singing Lessons', a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing, which talks about the death of my son and the hope that has been the aftermath of the healing from that tragedy.

There is a tomorrow after a disaster, and it's sometimes hard to remember that in the midst of it.

Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise.

The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change.

I've been through cancer, divorce, loss and bereavement, but they are things most humans go through.

Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.

We've all fallen, but at the same time we're not broken. There is the hint that we are going to get up again.

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

They have - they do still hit me occasionally, and it's an overwhelming grief for what - even though my life is so good now, even including going through treatment for cancer, my life is incredible.

Suffering isn't ennobling, recovery is.

Cancer is a very sad thing, but you can always take something from every experience.

There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.

People who live through transplants or disasters like Sept. 11 are survivors.

Most people are remarkably resilient. Even those who have been through war or great loss often find reservoirs of strength. But the legacy of trauma is a heavy burden to bear.

I've seen so many women in my family, so many mothers, that have lost children in the war in such absurd ways. I wonder how they do it. How do they keep living? How do they keep smiling?

Sugarland was a band we started to try to make things better. It was in the aftermath of 9-11; it was in the aftermath of my mother dying... there was a lot of weird stuff that had gone on that made you want to start something good.