Quotes About Perseverance

Stay focused on what is beautiful and abundant even as illness carves more and more of what you love away

My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.

I'll either get a medal or get committed.

The awful, ironic, glorious fix for the writing doldrums is to write the next page.

A novel in progress doesn't have a clear, forward process. It's messy, like a beloved, balky child.

Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.

I realized that it was not that I didn't want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn't know why I wanted to go on

the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was one i should willingly give up....moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable reactions to what life has dealt....even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

Now I had no choice but to live in the broken world that my mind had forced upon me.

It never occurred to her to give up.

The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful.

Th Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful.

Feeling normal for any extended period of time raises hopes that turn out, almost invariably, to be writ on water. I

knew better than to assume a straight shot at happiness: If we see a light at the end of the tunnel, he said, it's the light of an oncoming train.

But it has been precisely that persevering steadiness of my mother, her belief in seeing things through, and her great ability to love and learn, listen and change, that helped keep me alive through all of the years of pain and nightmare that were to come.

This was not why I had gotten a Ph.D., and I was beginning to understand Bob Dylans lines "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift." Only it was twenty-three years, and I was still pulling a lot of night shift as well.

Two other patients were waiting for their doctors, which only added to my sense of indignity and embarrassment at finding myself with the roles reversed--character building, no doubt, but I was beginning to tire or all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life.

Reading, which had been at the heart of my intellectual and emotional existence, was suddenly beyond my grasp. I was used to reading three or four books a week; now it was impossible. I did not read a serious work of literature or nonfiction, cover to cover, for more than ten years. The frustration and pain of this were immeasurable.

Far more important, they took me and my interests very seriously. They never tried to discourage me from becoming a doctor, even though it was an era that breathed, If woman, be a nurse.

I continue to have concerns about my decision to be public about my illness, but one of the advantages of having had manic-depressive illness for more than thirty years is that very little seems insurmountably difficult. Much like crossing the Bay Bridge when there is a storm over the Chesapeake, one may be terrified to go forward, but there is no question of going back.

when I was told either to lower my sights or to rein in my enthusiasms

the beast was best handled by turning it toward the sun.

I had gotten a Ph.D., and I was beginning to understand Bob Dylans lines "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift.

character building, no doubt, but I was beginning to tire of all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life.