Quotes About Courage

however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.

Margaret Atwood

Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or, Don't be.

There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain...Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolour picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Non temono che ce ne andiamo di nascosto. Non arriveremmo lontano. Temono altre fughe, quelle che puoi aprirti dentro, se hai un oggetto con un bordo tagliente.

But I like my stories to be true to life, which means there have to be wolves in them. Wolves in one form or another.

I did not pity her at all. In a way I admired her. I admired her lack of compunction, the courage of her bad manners, the energy of simple rage. Throwing a bag of spaghetti had a simplicity to it, a recklessness, a careless grandeur.

Wind comes in, your candle tips over and flares up, and a loose tent-flap catches fire, and through the widening black-edged gap you can see the eyes of the howlers, red and shining in the light from your burning paper shelter, but you keep on writing anyway because what else can you do?

Can't play it safe, can't play at all any more

Matter of fact, you would, says Zeb. Heart like shale. What you need is a good fracking.

fuck" is a spirit called upon for guidance in times of need.

Look—my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that, I can do nothing. I have to recant, give up the old belief that I am powerless and and because of it nothing I can do will ever hurt anyone. A lie which was always more disastrous than the truth would have been.

discretion is the better part of valour

Unlike Laura, I have never had the courage of my convictions.

Who cares, who cares. The perennial adolescent riposte. I cared, of course. I cared what people thought. I always did care. Unlike Laura, I have never had the courage of my convictions.

Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however - if I may use such an overworked word - miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.

Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn.

What people need to understand is that pussy is the Front Door of Life

Fighting back with joy rarely makes sense.

It is only when our fate hangs in the balance, when our very life depends on something, that we see whether or not we trust that the rope to which we are clinging will support us. If we do not, then we let of of the ledge and swing on it with our full weight.

Ah, but who will bell the cat?" "I am not sure what you mean." "It is a country saying. A council of mice met to decide what to do about the tomcat who was on the loose. They agreed the best plan was to attach a bell to his neck so they could hear him coming and hide. It was a fine plan—but it needed a mouse brave enough to risk his life jumping on the cat.

I know now that to die without tasting this is truly not to have lived. In this, and this only, have we lived: to feel all, to dare all, to try all.