Quotes About Adversity

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

You roll back to me.

I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time...

I was blown up while we were eating cheese.

Man is not made for defeat.

By guts I mean, grace under pressure

Please do it your own way. Do it in the mornings when your mind is cold Do it in the evenings when everything is sold. Do it in the springtime when springtime isn't there Do it in the winter We know winter well Do it on very hot days Try doing it in hell. Trade bed for a pencil Trade sorrow for a page No work it out your own way Have good luck at your age.

They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.

We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another.

Grace under pressure.

Strong in all the Broken Places

But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start.

They are strong," David said. "But there's a strong wind today and we drink according to the wind.

What kind of a hand is that,' he said. 'Cramp then if you want. Make yourself into a claw. It will do you no good.

He knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond that the hurricane made between all people who had been through it. He also knew that hurricanes could be so bad that nothing could live through them.

If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run.

It came very fast and the sun went a dull yellow and then everything was gray and the sky was covered and the cloud came on down the mountain and suddenly we were in it and it was snow.

Love is a dunghill, and I'm the cock that gets on it to crow.

Even if he was ever afraid he knew that he could do it anyway.

Be a damn fire eater now. He'd seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

The hell with my arm. You lose an arm you lose an arm. There's worse things than lose an arm. You've got two arms and you've got two of something else. And a man's still a man with one arm or with one of those. The hell with it,' he says. . . .after a minute he says, 'I got those other two still.

The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

He had only one thing to do and that was what he should think about and he must think it out clearly and take everything as it came along, and not worry. To worry was a bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult.