Quotes About Adversity

Richard Hough

Richard Hough

Running away just makes your arse a bigger target.

This enemy you cannot kill," I murmured. He nodded and finished the quote for me. "You can only drive it back damaged into the depths and teach your children to watch the waves for its return.

Men were like blades, they would all break sooner or later, you included. But you looked around at the men you led, and in their eyes you saw what kind of steel you had to hand, how it had been forged and tempered, what blows, if any, it would take.

Pull on the cold, clinking mail of your professional detachment, Archeth Indamaninarmal, inhabit it until it starts to feel warm and accustomed, and in time you'll forget you're wearing it at all. You'll only notice when it works, when it stops you feeling the steel-edged bite of something that might otherwise have gotten through and done you some damage. And then you'll just grin and shiver and shake off the blow, like warriors do.

the overwhelming impression I got was that if there was a line of least resistance in life, this face had never been along it.

And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn.

Voltar dos mortos pode ser dureza.

He storms down in savage joy, to meet all the waiting blades and hate.

Bullet-proof, right?' 'Mmm.' Kawahara tipped her head to one side. 'Depends on the bullet, I would say. But impact resistant, certainly.

Forty years ago, before I went away, you could get the same phlegmatic responses to economic hardship from the Suzi Petkovskis of this world. The same clamped, chain-smoking capacity for endurance, the same grim shrug, as if politics were some kind of massive, capricious weather system you couldn't do anything about. I went back to watching the skyline.

That's right, Dragonbane. And brothers always stood together, the buffalo came when they were called, the grass grew taller and greener, and it never fucking rained. Get a grip, old man.

Well, you know, there's a Skaranak saying for times like these: Running away just makes your arse a bigger target.

They'd spit in your eye and walk away if you called them victims, but somehow that same grit never found its way into any built form better than hardscrabble endurance and nonspecific rage.

real artists can survive the most hostile environments and yet find their true calling like homing pigeons. That's hogwash. Many real artists bear children too early or have too many, are too poor or too far removed culturally or monetarily from artistic opportunity to become the artists they really are.

Non illegitimi te carborundum, the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is "Don't let the bastards get you down." Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult.

Often God shuts a door in our face, And then subsequently opens the door through which we need to go. CATHERINE MARSHALL

Illegitemus non carborundum est ("Don't let the bastards grind you down").

cases and stretched

Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.

But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.

I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another.

I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions?