Life-Altering Event Quotes

Anyone I know who's almost died has come out of it, at least for a while, looking at things differently.

My father died during open-heart surgery on March 29 of my senior year in college. I was getting set to go to law school. I remember sitting in the waiting room when the doctor walked in. I said to myself, The worst possible thing just happened. What will you do?

I suffered a stroke in 2002 that made everything else in my life that happened to that point pale in comparison.

When I got out of the hospital, it was one of those classic things - you're looking death in the eye, and it changes you. I thought, I ought to go back on the road.

In every life there is a turning point. A moment so tremendous, so sharp and clear that one feels as if one's been hit in the chest, all the breath knocked out, and one knows, absolutely knows without the merest hint of a shadow of a doubt that one's life will never be the same.

The last thing I ever thought would ever happen to me was losing my legs.

I arrived in Bangkok in 1980: I was 23 years old, and it changed my life.

Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely.

What shaped me the most would probably be when my dad passed away. For the rest of my life, I'll kind of feel like he's gonna come home.

I was only 13 years old when I was forced to face the fragility of my own life. A routine surgery landed me in a medically induced coma for two weeks with a mere 1% chance of surviving. But survive I did.

There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.

I nearly died three times in 2008, and when you go through those experiences, you realize that you're blessed every day that you wake up. My world changed, my life changed, and with the help of my wife Jane, I was able to survive.

This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films.

The loss of my father marked my life. I'm 88 years old and I'm still mourning him because it's such a drama for me. It was just after my bar mitzvah and it was so tragic. The effect on me, I carry it all my life.

The day I heard Hank Williams for the first time, my life changed.

I mean, he was something that happened to me, you know? But before he was this minor figure in the drama of my life he was - you know, the central figure in the drama of his own life.

When I was seventeen, my life changed forever . . .

Your whole life is changed with that first child. Your social behaviors are all turned upside down, you're sleep deprived, but eight months in, my son had this seizure, and it just woke me up to the idea that, oh, no, this can end. And it can end in a way that will destroy you forever.

I came face to face with death at thirteen years old.

People only talk about what a joyous experience it is, but there is terror: Your life, as you know it, is over. It's over the day that child is born. It's over, and something completely new starts.

One of the worst days of my life was telling Dick Ebersol I was going to TNT.

It is remarkable how a seemingly insignificant action or event can change entire lives.

When you have a traumatic event in your life, you change. You're not the same person you were, and you have to discover who you've become.

The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up.