Quotes About Adversity

the test of our practice is how we handle problems.

Realizing that this problem is only temporary, like all things, and it too will pass, gives us more space to find ways to resolve it.

NOTHING goes exactly as planned. Make your OWN destiny

Never cry in front of these men. Never cry. Ever. It's only hair. Hair will grow back.

was empty, what had happened to the family's

There weren't any villains though. The world was just complicated in various ways, and there weren't any obvious villains to be found. It was excruciating.

Life's a bitch. This is true. But she's my bitch.

Poverty is not the stepchild of the Great Recession; poverty has always been a part of American life.

I told her once I wasn't good at anything. She ran her thumb over my lips raw from kissing her and said survival was a talent.

Oh, God," Shannon moans. "We have to boil water," I tell Kenny. "She wants Cup-a-Soup?" "No, it's to sterilize things." "What's that?" I start rummaging through my house looking for anything useful. I get a knife, scissors, salad tongs, clothespins, a bottle of whiskey. Kenny

She told me once she envied the women who lived back in the good old days who only had to worry about Indians and mountain lions killing their husbands. Something about those things being beyond a wife's control.

I thought of Walter again. "Six or twelve," he sometimes said when he was depressed, which wasn't all the time but often enough that I recognized a blue mood when it was settling in. "That's your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.

People say, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn't kill you, doesn't kill you.

she went about her business in a way that put me in mind of an old matchbook. You can scratch the head against the strip in the same way you always have but you are not going to get any kind of spark.

I've likely rolled with punches when I should have hit back," she said. "But I rolled my way into a life I love.

Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn't possible. Maybe that's what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It's like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It's the same thing, but it's not the same at all.

Six or twelve," he sometimes said when he was depressed, which wasn't all the time but often enough that I recognized a blue mood when it was settling in. "That's your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.

Life is full of things you never figured on.

People say, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn't kill you, doesn't kill you. That's all you get. Sometimes, you just have to hope that's enough.

calming breaths even as water burned my eyes. There was comfort in the truth, no matter how difficult.

my mentor cautioned me that I should always write about "people and their problems, not problems and their people.

the wrong race and the wrong time.

knew that things like this happen to people, but by people, I didn't mean us.

Spontaneity and playing it by ear is fine for those who can afford it, but a boy from Eloe had to have a strategy