Quotes About Adversity

Odd how the daily imperatives persist even in the face of collective disaster.

Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Shame on any man who gets used to that taste.

At that moment I would have welcomed spider-rats nibbling on my toes about as much as the idea of chatting with a missionary priest.

We will revel in hardships and welcome strangeness.

The charge took less than forty seconds but Kassad discovered that this was ample time for his mouth to go absolutely dry, his breathing to begin to have problems, and for his testicles to retreat completely into his body. If the rest of Kassad could have found a comparable hiding place, he would have seriously considered crawling into it.

It is hard to die. Harder to live.

I've never been in a place that seemed as mean or shitty, and I've spent time in some of the great sewer cities of the world.

storm and nightfall.

The steward had been more circumspect after that. He had learned - as Odysseus had learned after a certain number of years of his wanderings - that his guile was no match for the world and that hubris would always be punished by the gods.

interlocutor

suddenly. "Why do you men have to add to it? Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse?

Mountaineers know that all mountains are in a constant state of collapse—their verticality being inescapably and inevitably worn down every moment by wind, water, weather, and gravity—but

when I find the bullet iwill spit it out it out.

We lived in Boston, in an apartment where even the rats had to walk stoop-shouldered.

martyrs of the Antarctic.

Strange," said Natalie. "What?" "Two gunshot wounds, pneumonia, a concussion, three broken ribs, and enough cuts and bruises to keep a football team happy for a full season." "Jews are hard to kill.

The Consul gripped the edges of the mat with fingers gone white. He had tied the strap of his duffel bag around his belt, otherwise the bag would have tumbled off to a glacier far below.

After listening to my entire story, he quietly said: You can say, This is impossible, terrible.' Or you can say, 'This is beautiful, wonderful.' You can imagine that you're in exile. Or you can imagine that you have more than one home.

Gone was the reflexive need to see the worst in things. Before the tumors took her life, they gave her a few moments of grace.

But gratitude and trauma weren't mutually exclusive.

It's possible to grow up in the wrong house, on the wrong street, in the wrong town, in the wrong part of the country. It's possible to go to the wrong school. To have the wrong dad. To be pushed to do the wrong things. But it is also possible to survive all these psychic indignities if you have one, maybe two people who recognize you for who you are.

What she doesn't realize is that I have survived for her as well -- and only now am I beginning to survive for myself.

I felt so skinless at times! Things hit me so hard!

The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.