Quotes About Perseverance

As an old acquaintance of mine used to say, "If you can't duck it, fuck it." I'm pretty sure he knew it was duct and not duck, but I'll forgive him for the sake of the rhyme.

I slipped on through, slicker than whale shit through an ice floe.

Gregor wanted more knowledge than the village grammar school could provide. The next level of school was a half-day's journey away. To attend, he would have to eat and sleep there. His parents scraped together every cent they could, but they could only afford to pay for books, a bed, and half of Gregor's meals. Twelve-year-old Gregor went anyway. He chose to feed his mind and go without food to fill his grumbling belly. At school, he feasted on his lessons.

If you choose to surrender your pen to God, you will probably face the odd looks and stares from your friends or family members who won't understand your choices. They may think you're not doing enough to "make this happen" on your own.

I'm so sick of my life. The chapter I want doesn't get written. I'm always stuck in the "wait" chapter.

Housework can look like a Sisyphean task that gives you no sense of reward or completion .

I managed to persevere partly because not everyone responded with that stare; there was enthusiasm as well. And I was struck that no one responded with bored indifference. The topic was clearly hot—too hot for some people to handle, heartwarming to others.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it.

Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.

I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.

There is no cure except to live the hell out of our lives, to take it apart, to put it back together, to dig it all up, and then fill the hole. To help ourselves and one another to the best of our abilities. To believe everything entirely, while also calling bullshit for what it is.

I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

I walked and I walked, my mind shifting into a primal gear that was void of anything but forward motion, and I walked until walking became unbearable, until I believed I couldn't walk even one more step. And then I ran.

It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.

Writing is hard....Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do.

A terrible thing happened to you, but you mustn't let it define your life.

We do not have the right to feel helpless. We must help ourselves. After destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives.

This is how you get unstuck. You reach.

but thinking about it didn't do a thing. Thinking about it was a long dive into a bucket of shit that didn't have a bottom.

I would suffer. I would suffer. I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

I know it's hard to write, darling. But it's harder not to. The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do.

nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.