Quotes About Resilience

Se quedó escuchando el goteo del agua en el bosque. Lecho rocoso, este. El frío y el silencio. Las cenizas del mundo difunto trajinadas de acá para allá por los crudos y transitorios vientos en el vacío. Llevadas, esparcidas y llevadas de nuevo. Todo desencajado de su apuntalamiento. Sin soporte en el viento cinéreo. Sostenido por una respiración, temblorosa y breve. Ojalá mi corazón fuese de piedra.

At our noblest we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.

He rode out in the dark long before daylight and he rode the sun up and he rode it down again. In the oncoming years a terrible drought struck west Texas. He moved on. There was no work in that country anywhere. Pasture gates stood open and sand drifted in the roads and after a few years it was rare to see stock of any kind and he rode on. Days of the world. Years of the world. Till he was old.

Whoo, he said when he saw them. I'm drunkern shit. They sat their horses and looked down at him. Can you ride or not? said Rawlins. Does a bear shit in the woods? Hell yes I can ride. I was ridin when I fell off.

Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to be had and the nights were long and dark and cold beyond anything they'd yet encountered. Cold to crack the stones. To take your life.

The razorous shoulder blades sawing under the pale skin.

Gray vines coiled leftward in this northern hemisphere, what winds them shapes the dogwhelk's shell. Weeds sprouted from cinder and brick.

Other than a light beading of sweat on his forehead there was little evidence that his labors had cost him anything at all.

What's the bravest thing you ever did? Getting up this morning, he said.

You are either going to have to find some other way to live or some other place in the world to do it in.

To make the world. To make it again and again. To make it in the very maelstrom of its undoing.

There's too much shit still down the road that I got to deal with. It aint goin to end here.

They struggled forever in the roads cold coagulate.

We'll just take it one step at a time. Okay. Don't let go. Okay. No matter what. No matter what.

They went on in the perfect blackness, sightless as the blind.

Dont let go. Okay. No matter what. No matter what.

It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond ran along the crest of a ridge where the barren woodland fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom.

Okay. This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They dont give up. Okay.

De acuerdo. Esto es lo que hacen los buenos. Seguir intentándolo. Jamás se rinden.

It is always one's stance upon uncertain ground that invites the attentions of one's enemies. Or discourages it.

The uncle lit up and blew smoke in a thin blue viper's breath toward the window. It coiled and diffused in the yellow light. He smiled. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I quit, he said.

You have to carry the fire.

You wear out, Ed Tom. All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.

When he reached the fence he stopped for a moment to look back at the road and then he went on, crossing into a field of rank weeds that heeled with harsh dip and clash under the wind as if fled through by something unseen.