Quotes About Adversity

We've got story enough here to eff up more than one young life, but it is a project.

So much of life with infirmity came down to dignity and will.

Lily picked up her spoon and dipped into Rock Bottom Farm's maple ice cream. We could hear the crash of corporate collapse with every bite. Tough work, but somebody's got to do it.

Barbara Kingsolver

In my time I've learned surprising things about the powers stacked against us before we're born. But the way of my people is to go on using the words they've always given us: Ignorant bastard. Shit happens.

Barbara Kingsolver

A godo story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. ... It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun...

If fight or flight is the choice, it's way easier to fly.

already with needles inside. "Tig just

admired their own steadfast lives. Right up to the day when hope in all its versions went out of stock

I'm saying when God slams a door on you it's probably a shitstorm. You're going to end up in rubble. But it's okay because without all that crap overhead, you're standing in the daylight.

People had to manage terrible truths.

Many had tried their best with us, but we came out of too-hungry mothers. Four demons spawned by four different starving hearts.

Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story

the tall weed gets cut.

motherless girl will come up wanting in some respects, but in my opinion she has a freedom unknown to other daughters. For every womanly fact of life she doesn't get told, a star of possibility still winks for her on the horizon.

She stuck with a different theory: I needed to be more pushy with them. Did she give up on her dreams? No, she worked hard for what she wanted. Did I expect anybody to look out for Damon if he wouldn't look out for himself? Life is what you make it! Here's where Miss Barks didn't grow up: foster care. She had no clue how people can be living right on the edge of what's doable. If you push too hard, you can barrel yourself over a damn cliff.

The devil here is a boy with too much imagination," he usually said.

Like a little blue prizefighter. Those are the words she'd use later on, being not at all shy to discuss the worst day of my mom's life. And if that's how I came across to the first people that laid eyes on me, I'll take it. To me that says I had a fighting chance.

AS LONG AS I KEPT MOVING, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown.

my old Aunt Tess. She was a mother to me if I needed one. What Aunt Tess loved to say was: "Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up your pace." And that was more or less what we all believed in.

marched uphill to meet her demise.

If you're standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight.

From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.