Quotes About Perseverance

I have been incredibly lucky, he said. Lucky in my life. Oh, I know some people would not say so. They'd say I hadn't stuck with anything, or that I hadn't made any money. They'd say I wasted that time when I was down-and-out. But that's not true. I heard the call, he said, raising his eyebrows, half smiling at himself. Seriously. I did. I heard the call to get out of the box. Out of the got-to-do-something-big box. Out of the ego box.

It would be better to think that time had soured and thinned and made commonplace a brew that used to sparkle, that difficulties had altered us both, and not for the better.

Doing this was like wading and then throwing yourself into the lake for the first icy swim, in June. A sickening shock at first, then amazement that you were still moving, lifted up on a stream of steely devotion— calm above the surface of your life, surviving, though the pain of the cold continued to wash into your body.

Quienes recibían las visitas iban en sillas de ruedas, cojeaban apoyados en un bastón o caminaban con rigidez, sin ayuda, a la cabeza de la procesión, orgullosos del logro pero con la mirada perdida o babeando irremisiblemente por el esfuerzo.

Learning to survive, no matter with what cravenness and caution, what shocks and forebodings, is not the same as being miserable. It is too interesting.

Acts done without faith may restore faith.

She was Detroit born, and Detroit bred, and when she died, she'd be Detroit-dead. She might not have much, but she had enough.

She sat in her room on the couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like a stone. Curl the edges of yourself up and fold them under where no one can see. ~pg 29, Susie's sister Lindsey dealing with grief.

You're not supposed to look back, you're supposed to keep going.

In the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway

It's very weird to succeed at thirty-nine years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway.

I focused very hard on the dead geranium in his line of vision. I thought if I could make it bloom he would have his answer. In my heaven it bloomed. In my heaven geranium petals swirled in eddies up to my waist. On Earth nothing happened... I stood alone in a sea of bright petals.

I would do what I did best, I thought. I would wait. It was only a matter of time, after all.

Since their first kiss in our kitchen two weeks after my death, I had known that he was - as my sister and I had giggled with our Barbies or while watching Bobby Sherman on TV - her one and only. Samuel had pressed himself into her need and the cement between the two of them had begun to set immediately. They had gone to Temple together, side by side. He had hated it and she had pushed him through. She had loved it and this had allowed him to survive.

If I was aware I would have to tie laces I would not have been able to put my feet into socks.

She likes a quiet life, has few close friends, and makes new ones slowly. ...'I want to work on my next book... and try to be here to garden a little in the fall, and read. I'm married to the man I want to be married to, live in a certain way that I like living. It's very weird to succeed at thirty-nine years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway.

Because horror on Earth is real and it is everyday. It is like a flower or the sun; it cannot be contained.

Je?eli dadz? ci papier w linie, pisz w poprzek.

All of them are gone except for me.. And for me.. Nothing is gone.

Life is like that I thought, as I turned the corner to my building. Freedom has its danger as well as its joys. And the sooner we learn to get up after a fall, the better off will be.

I have fought and kicked and fasted and prayed and cursed and cried myself to the point of existing.

Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

it is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.

And I thank God let me gain understanding enough to know love can't be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan. P.238