Quotes About Challenge

People who're somehow burned at birth, withered or ablated way past anything like what might be fair, they either curl up in their fire, or else they rise.

Existence and life break people in all kinds of awful fucking ways all the time.

I think serious art is supposed to make us confront things that are difficult in ourselves and in the world.

On the other hand, there are those who feel that fiction can be challenging, generally and thematically, and even on a sentence-by-sentence basis—that it's okay if a person needs to work a bit while reading, for the rewards can be that much greater when one's mind has been exercised and thus (presumably) expanded.

Estas mañanas peores con suelos fríos y ventanas calientes y luz despiadada...con la certidumbre en el alma de que ese día no será atravesado sino más bien escalado verticalmente que cuando al final vaya a dormir será otra vez como si cayera desde algún sitio alto y escarpado.

It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

There was the matter of the withered-looking and bradyauxetic arms, which just as in a hair-raising case of Volkmann's contracture 115 curled out in front of his thorax in magiscule S's and were usable for rudimentary knifeless eating and slapping at doorknobs until they sort of turned just enough and doors could be kicked open and

The sharply precise divisions and boundaries, together with the fact that—wind and your more exotic-type spins aside—balls can be made to travel in straight lines only, make textbook tennis plane geometry. It is billiards with balls that won't hold still. It is chess on the run. It is to artillery and airstrikes what football is to infantry and attrition.

people who feel that fiction should be easy to read, that it's a popular medium

Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win.

if you're poor old Mario Incandenza you take your competitive strokes where you can find them.

Because Tavis had been the one to take the lion's share of the heat when it turned out that Blue Jays' spectators in the stands

Life is like tennis. Those who serve best usually win.

Let's not sit around and give each other hand-jobs.

Pat told Gately that grim honesty and hopelessness were the only things you need to start recovering from Substance-addiction, but that without these qualities you were totally up the creek.

the soul's certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.

greater when one's mind has been exercised and thus

How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This is why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary.

You play right up to your limit and then pass your limit and look back at your former limit and wave a hankie at it, embarking.

Le domande più brutali sono quelle che ti costringono a mentire

But facing a dragon does not mean swaggering up to it unarmed and insulting its mom.

Ya eran una desgracia las pequeñas cucarachas marrones de Boston y Nueva Orleans, pero al menos uno podía entrar a su casa y, al encender la luz, huían despavoridas. Estas cucarachas de cloacas del sudoeste, cuando enciendes las luces, te miran de abajo arriba como diciendo: ¿Tienes algún problema?

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted my no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?

I knew it wasn't going to be easy to fence a stolen grand piano in outlaw biker circles.