Quotes About Perseverance

The publishers of Superman comic books, National Periodical Publications [later DC Comics], killed my days, murdered my nights, choked my happiness, strangled my career. I consider National's executives economic murderers, money-mad monsters. I, Jerry Siegel, the co-originator of Superman, put a curse of the Superman movie!

And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.

He said even if it's too cloudy to see, the sun will still rise, it will still be there. But that's the whole point, I said. Seeing it. Is it? he said.

Cross the creek on the stepping stones of your failures.

Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain.

Maniac Magee was not born in a dump.

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house.

The trouble with miracles is, they don't last long. And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.

No matter what day it is, no matter what time, no matter where I am - I'm always at the star party, staring at the slhouette on the crest of the hill, whishing that one dark shape would split in two. But it never does.

I saw someone running. That was all I needed. I could not walk if someone else was running. I broke loose from Uri. Others were running. It was a race! I didn't know where the finish line was, but I was determined to win. Many had shouted, stop! But no one had ever caught me. The street was getting more and more crowded as people poured into it. I streaked through the crowds. I passed other runners. I didn't care how many there were; I would beat them all. I laughed as I ran.

Just cause it doesn't look like you thought it would, doesn't mean that you're not living your dream. from Stargirl

Sometimes life goes its own way and drags you along.

Could life get any worse? She had read that great literature often comes out of great tragedy. If that was true, well, Shakespeare better move over.

Jerry Spinelli

hospital in Yuma. We

This was the history of the world. Recovery and collapse, despair and relief. The dialectic of clean and dirty. Every time is worse than the time before. The bad things come, days and nights and days and nights get so unbelievably fucked up, unbelievably fast, but in the end-- if there is an end-- everybody's best self just slogs forward, one stagger, one fall, one day, one 'what the fuck just happened?' moment of oblivion and soul-broken joy at a time. All we have to do is not die.

Someone jabbed me from behind with a rake. I jumped aside. Someone else pricked me with a sharp prong. Again I sprang away, crying loudly. The crowd became more lively. A stone struck me. I lay down, face to the earth, not wishing to know what might happen next. My head was being bombarded with dried cow dung, moldy potatoes, apple cores, handfuls of dirt, and small stones. I covered my face with my hands and screamed into the dust which covered the road.

Man carries in himself his own private war, which he has to wage, win or lose

bind in spite of secrets and

My head was just circling things, so I had to pull out all those squirming thoughts and nail 'em to the paper.

we all just do the best we can. And that's enough.

I have two options in this world. I can allow what is happening around me to control me, to break me, to destroy me and make me a twisted, angry shell of a person, as it has done to so many others. Or I can rise above it. There is ugliness around me, but there is beauty, too. I will find whatever I seek.

How do you do it?" I asked her. "How do you keep getting up every day and fighting when winning seems impossible?" She thought about it, and then she said, "Men sometimes say to me: You might win the battle, Gurley, but you'll never win the war. But no one wins the war, Ryan. Not really. I mean, we're all going to die, right? "But to win a battle now and then? What more could you want?

But the only thing I can think of is Time and patience.