Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" There was just so much attention that got focused on my story, and what that created was an opportunity for me to share what were the tools, what were the strategies, what was the thinking that had me break though those boundaries. "

Liz Murray

Tools

Thinking

Related Quotes:

" My mother used to sit at the foot of my bed, and she would share her dreams with me. "

" When I grew up in the Bronx, we always had everyone telling us, 'Watch out for the system, watch out for child welfare, watch out, they'll get you,' and I grew up with this feeling of, 'Society is over there and they're dangerous and not safe.' "

" I have just one black and white photograph left of my mother when she was younger. She was 17 when it was taken and beautiful with wispy curls and eyes that shone like dark marbles. "

" I've learned in my life that you really don't know what's possible until you're already doing it. "

" People are surprised by the poverty and think that I wasn't cared for. But that wasn't the case - I was deeply loved. "

" I thought, 'Let's make it a check list. What if I got my education even though I lost my mother, even though my dad is in a shelter?' and looking at these things as hurdles to go over. I could inspire myself. "

" Ma was legally blind due to a degenerative eye disease she'd had since birth. This meant she was entitled to welfare, and our lives revolved around the first day of every month when her payment was due. "

" I guess more than anything, I just realized, okay, one day I had a home to live in and my family around me. The next day, I did not. "

" I was 17 and living on the streets. I had the education of technically an eighth-grader, but in reality, I had never had a formal education. "

" As well as being blind, Ma turned out to have the same mental illness that her mother had had. Between 1986 and 1990, she suffered six schizophrenic bouts, each requiring her to be institutionalised for up to three months. "

" I had a calling inside of me. I had a sense that when I was going through experiences like living on the streets, losing my parents to AIDS, just having my whole world turned upside-down, there was this feeling inside of me like I was meant for something greater. "

Liz Murray

World

Feeling

" I realized eventually that when I ran out of places to stay and found myself on the D train and in Central Park, I was actually homeless. "

" I'd been living on the streets of New York, and I was sleeping at my friends' houses, sometimes in the subway. "

" When you take charge of your own narrative, it gives you a handle on it. "

" I think there is something to be said for what you can do when you don't know what you aren't supposed to be able to do. "

" I guess if there is a big spiritual experience in my life, it is me becoming a mother. "

" Shortly after I turned 13, Child Welfare took me into care. I was sent to a residential centre where girls with behavioural problems were 'evaluated'. My time there comes back to me now only in flashes of smells, images and sounds. "

" If I want to be a loving, generous, giving person, I'm not going to test the waters. I'm simply going to be a loving, generous, giving person. "

" If I could have a family and a home one night, and all of it's gone the next, that must mean that life has the capacity to change. And then I thought, 'Whoa! That means that just as change happens to me, I can cause change in my life.' "

" I realized that I had the ability to carve out a life for myself, that it was in no way limited by what had already occurred in my past. And that inspired me to go to school. "

Liz Murray

Myself

School

" Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never. "

" The lesson that people can't give me what they don't have, and if there's anything I took from it, it was: okay, I don't really expect anyone to hand me anything. There's going to be me and the world. "

Liz Murray

Okay

World

" I feel like my life has been a series of miracles. I was in every sense a lost cause. "