Quotes on Recovery

Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

I guess the worst day I have had was when I had to stand up in rehab in front of my wife and daughter and say 'Hi, my name is Sam and I am an addict.'

I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

When I first went up to see my editor, I was with my agent, and my editor said, 'Well, what have you been doing all these years?' And my agent said, 'He's been in recovery. From his childhood.'

The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.

Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.

You survived the abuse, you’re going to survive the recovery.

Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.

Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.

Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

Life is very interesting... in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.

There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them. But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.

I think that America's recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Security is the absolute precondition for sustainable recovery from conflict; without it, people cannot rebuild their country or return to school or work.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.