Quotes About Challenges

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

None of them was willing to be a girl, he said. You can see why not. I know, right? I don't blame them, she said with a hard edge to her voice. Being a girl is the pits, trust me.

I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not your justification for existence, I said to her once.

You need to be strong. They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong.

All observations of life are harsh, because life is.

Boys with their first beards can be a thorough pain in the neck.

By the time she was sixteen, Jane had heard enough about this to last her several lifetimes. In her mother's account of the way things were, you were young briefly and then you fell. You plummeted downwards like an overripe apple and hit the ground with a squash; you fell, and everything about you fell too. You got fallen arches and a fallen womb, and your hair and teeth fell out. That's what having a baby did to you. It subjected you to the force of gravity.

Possible, impossible. What could be done? We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

I'm bad at picking heroes.

Ill winds blow far and find a ready welcome.

I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it.

I felt confused, and also inadequate; whatever he was asking or demanding, it was beyond me. this was the first time a man would expect more from me than i was capable of giving, but it wouldn't be the last.

Roz is crying again. What she's mourning is her own good will. She tried so hard, she tried so hard to be kind and nurturing, to do the best thing. But Tony and the twins were right: no matter what you do, somebody always gets boiled.

I could spell it, I say. Write it down. He hesitates at this novel idea. Possibly he doesn't remember I can. I've never held a pen or a pencil, in this room, not even to add up the scores. Women can't add, he once said, jokingly. When I asked him what he meant, he said, For them, one and one and one and one don't make four. What

The Fall was ongoing, but its trajectory led ever downward. Sucked

I thought she'd get angry then, but all she said was, "You are not unique in the universe. No one has an easy time in life. But maybe God has effed up—as you put it—your life for a reason." "And I can hardly fucking wait to find out what that is," I said.

No. It's the newly conscious young I mean, the ones with ambition and fresh diffidence, those who've learned the hard way that reach exceeds grasp nine times out of ten. How disappointed they are! And if and when they succeed for the first time, how anxious it makes them! They develop insomnia, or claustrophobia, or bulimia, or fear of heights. Now they will have to live up to themselves. Bummer.

The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.

open up the lifelines

Well, none of us, as far as I can see, are doing what we intended to do right now, but I think we'll make out just the same. It's a poor person and a poor nation that sits down and cries because life isn't precisely what they expected it to be.

Oh, it wasn't fair that she should have a dead husband and a baby yelling in the next room and be out of everything that was pleasant.

With the spirit of her people who would not know defeat, even when it stared them in the face, she raised her chin. She could get Rhett back. She knew she could. There had never been a man she couldn't get, once she set her mind upon him. "I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took the credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him. Men were rough of speech and often drunk. Women ignored the lapses of speech and put the drunkards to bed without bitter words. Men were rude and outspoken, women were always kind, gracious and forgiving.