The Gift: 12 Lessons To Save Your Life Quotes
"In my mind, I was no longer imprisoned in a death camp, cold and hungry and ruptured by loss. I was on the stage of the Budapest opera house, dancing the role of Juliet in Tchaikovsky’s ballet."
"No one can take from you what you’ve put in your mind."
"The worst prison is not the one the Nazis put me in. The worst prison is the one I built for myself."
"Many of us experience feeling trapped in our minds. Our thoughts and beliefs determine, and often limit, how we feel, what we do, and what we think is possible."
"Although our lives have probably been very different, perhaps you know what I mean."
"Each moment in Auschwitz was hell on earth. It was also my best classroom."
"The foundation of freedom is the power to choose."
"The ultimate key to freedom is to keep becoming who you truly are."
"Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional."
"A feeling is only a feeling. There’s no right or wrong. There’s just my feeling and yours."
"What comes out of you doesn’t make you sick; what stays in there does."
"I don’t want people to read my story and think, 'There’s no way my suffering compares to hers.' I want people to hear my story and think, 'If she can do it, so can I!'"
"As long as you’re avoiding your feelings, you’re denying reality."
"A feeling is just a feeling—it’s not your identity."
"You can’t do anything for your sisters until you start loving yourself."
"The only thing you can change is right here in the present."
"It’s difficult to relinquish our old ways of earning the A’s and discover a new way to build love and connection."
"You have something no one else will ever have. You have you. For a lifetime."
"I am no longer in the habit of denying myself, emotionally or physically."
"The ability to be still with my discomfort didn’t happen overnight. But as the years pass, I keep practicing."
"It’s not good to live with success looming over you, feeling burdened by the need to reach a certain height to be worthy of love."
"Love means that we practice self-love, that we strive to be generous and compassionate toward others—and to ourselves."
"Honey, find you and keep filling it up with more you. You don’t have to work to be loved. You just have to be you. May you be more and more you every day."
"If you sit with one butt on two chairs, you become half-assed."
"When you’re free, you’re able to live with authenticity."
"Cheating is a dangerous game. Nothing is more exciting than a new lover."
"Honesty starts with learning to tell the truth to yourself."
"Healing can’t happen as long as we’re hiding or disowning parts of ourselves."
"The things we silence or cover up become like hostages in the basement, trying to more and more desperately to get our attention."
"It took me decades to forgive myself for surviving."
"But guilt keeps you stuck. It’s rooted in shame—when you believe 'I’m not worthy'; when you think that you’re not enough, that nothing is enough, no matter what you do."
"Spend a day listening to your self-talk. Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to—that’s what you reinforce."
"Grief is often not about what happened. It’s about what didn’t happen."
"Resolving grief means both to release ourselves from responsibility for all the things that weren’t up to us, and to come to terms with the choices we’ve made that can’t be undone."
"When grief came knocking—which it does, to you, to me, to everyone—Daniel wasn’t content to live automatically, doing the same thing over and over."
"Grieving is difficult, but it can also feel good. You can revisit the past. You can even embrace it. You’re not stuck there. You’re here now. And you’re strong."
"You can’t want something for another person. You can only discover what’s right for you."
"Freedom comes in letting go of the need to be right."
"You’re both right. I went back to Auschwitz alone."
"When you’re assertive, you speak in statements... So don’t put your life in someone else’s hands."
"The key to maintaining your freedom during a conflict is to hold your truth while also relinquishing the need for power and control."
"No one grows with criticism. So eliminate it. No criticism. None, ever."
"If you have something to prove, you’re still a prisoner."
"I first understood this the night I danced for Mengele. My physical body was trapped in a death camp, but my spirit was free."
"You don’t have to prove your worth. You can just embrace it, celebrate that you’re imperfect and whole."
"The best way to let go of the need for control is to become powerful."
"To grow, you’ve got to evolve instead of revolve."
"When fear comes like a panic storm... take your own precious hand and say, 'Thank you, fear, for wanting to protect me.'"
"We aren’t born with fear. Somewhere along the way, we learn it."
"You never know what’s coming from the outside... But fear and love don’t coexist. And fear doesn’t have to rule your life."
"It's not that we make our fears go away. We don't let them dominate. We invite the other voices in the room to do some talking. And then we do something."
"Often when we’re stuck it’s not that we don’t know what to do. It’s that we’re afraid we won’t do it well enough."
"It doesn’t take courage to strive for perfection. It takes courage to be average."
"What others thought about her was up to them."
"It is so challenging and dangerous to leave the cycle of abuse that most women return multiple times to their abuser before breaking free—if they ever do."
"When you risk, you don’t know how it will turn out."
"Curiosity is vital. It’s what allows us to risk."
"Forgiveness isn’t something we do for the person who’s hurt us. It’s something we do for ourselves."
"Hope isn’t the white paint we use to mask our suffering. It’s an investment in curiosity."
"I lost something I didn’t want to lose," she said. "I wasn’t given a choice."
"You have a right to feel rage. It’s a human emotion. You are human."
"When we can’t release anger, we’re either denying that we were victimized, or denying that we’re human."
"Anger is a secondary emotion, a defense, armor we put up around the primary feeling underneath."
"The loss of things I’ve valued and held dear...it’s just an object, yet it stands for something more, for life, motherhood, freedom—all things worth celebrating and fighting for."
"What I’m saying is that life keeps giving me opportunities to choose freedom—to love myself as I am: human, imperfect, and whole."
"Life—even with its inevitable trauma, pain, grief, misery, and death—is a gift."
"Pain, hardship, and suffering are the gift that helps us grow and learn and become who we are meant to be."
"I used to ask, ‘Why me?’ But now I ask, ‘Why not me?’"
"Our darkest and brightest places—our shadows and our flames—are intertwined."
"I am not just a tailor, Papa. You’re the best tailor!"