A cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn't killed it yet.

Once he got bitten, and they all wept bitterly, expecting to see a spectacular death - agony; but he just went off into the bush and probably ate something, for he came back in a few days quite...

It was a survival thing: he didn't answer back, didn't say anything about job security for prison guards, debate the nature of repentance, rehabilitation, or rates of recidivism. He didn't say...

I kill things... and eat them. Axel Reid

Still hate the water, bitch?"Wh - What?

"Stay in your boats," Dahra said. "We're still going to need food. Throw your fish onto the dock. I'll get Albert to send someone here to collect it. Then go back out, row up the coast a little ways,...

Imagine trying to live without air. Now imagine something worse.

Everything is a tool - a boot, a sled, a dog - and a hand, an arm, even a man! If it breaks down you throw it away and you march on! It's brutal, yes! And it's ugly. But anything else is sentiment and...

Standing over her, I took the time to admire my handy work until I realized that I had just killed a potential meal. Damn it Bobbi, I snarled as I kicked her corpse. Look what you made me do.

Both ignorance and the old metaphysics tend to produce these undesirable nervous effects of reversed order and so non-survival evaluation. If we use the nervous system in a way which is against its...

Art is inextricably tied to man's survival - not to his physical survival, but to that on which his physical survival depends: to the preservation and survival of his consciousness.

I did not have all the answers. I did not know if I'd deserved God's grace or wrath, or what would become of me if I ever fled this town. But I did know how to shoot a gun. - Skylla Warden

You're covered in blood again." "I really am." "Why are you always covered in blood when I wake up after being unconscious?" "Usually for the same reason you were unconscious, I think."

Hell, I'll be safest pretending I'm a boy the rest of my life. The frontier ain't for the faint of heart, and it certainly ain't kind to women. Sometimes I think the whole world's 'gainst us.

"Of course they were eaten," he retorted, his eyes flashing in cold humour. "Trolls generally aren’t exactly renowned for being vegetarians."

A moving target is harder to kill, and I didn't stop running, maneuvering, until I reached home base, where I could breathe between death - defying sprints. I just need to make it home alive, and this...

Because I'm selfish. I'm a coward. I'm the kind of girl who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn't follow to suffer and die.

'Should we plan our escape route now?' I asked. She laughed. 'We'll push Cahil into their path to slow them down.'

I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin. 'Do you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question?'

Instinct is everything.

Maria, groaning for scraps, would drape his head on my feet as I ate, trying to camouflage himself as my napkin or the rug.

Quinn glanced at me. "Gonna make it?" "Yeah, yeah," I answered. "Though what's the point? Mom's going to kill us anyway." "True." "If that thing doesn't kill us first," I added when the stench of rot...

I'd learned long ago you had to block out the rush of regrets that followed the adrenaline dip after a fight. Otherwise the loop of thoughts could pull you under. Did you just kill someone? Or was it...

My right foot hits the ground first, but my left one's gone AWOL, and I'm cartwheeling, my body mapped by local explosions of pain - - ankle, knee, elbow - - shit, my left ski's gone, whipped off,...

James could do all this because he had made a bargain with himself: he wouldn't try to get killed, nor would he try to survive. He could do all this because he felt terribly sorry for the men he...

Fred launched himself at Dawes, pushing out with numbed legs, and Dawes scuttled back. Fred landed on the deck hard. The world grayed out for a second, and he tasted blood. He struggled forward,...

Said his name was Alex. And he was big - time hungry. Hungry, hungry, hungry. But real happy. Said he'd been surviving on edible plants he identified from the book. Like he was real proud of it.

She clung desperately to the words that had saved her life.

…thirst is harder to bear than hunger, heat, or cold.

Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born...