Quotes About Struggle

Marriage is like working in a coal mine. You hack away in the dark, day after day, busting rock, and you think you're not getting anywhere, and then all of a sudden, this little sliver of sunlight appears and you say to yourself, oh, that's what I've been waiting for--just a little light, just a little bit of hope--a sign, maybe, that will get me through. And...it does.

For Ciro, Enza would sacrifice, fight to put food on the table, worry and fret over babies, and live life in full. She had only one life to share, and one heart to give the man who most deserved it. If she took Ciro on, she was in for a struggle compared to her life with Vito, but the love of all loves was worth it.

I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain. --Valentine, while in Italy (pg 267)

sometimes things don't always go the way we want this side of Heaven

May God bless you and give you what you need because what you want will get you in trouble." Figliolo blessed himself. "The Cabrellis have always been fighters. You'll be all right.

Did you ever find yourself in a place in life where you had committed to something, and you couldn't make it work?

The terrible things that happen to us in this life never make any sense when we're in the middle of them, floundering, no end in sight. There is no rope to hang on to, it

Two families—one side wears tuxedos and holds a gas can, the other wears a frilly gown and holds a match.

There were all manners of souvenirs and trinkets for sale when Ciro and Luigi disembarked from the ferry into the port of lower Manhattan. Signs advertising Sherman Turner cigars, Zilita Black tobacco, and Roisin's Doughnuts graced rolling carts selling Sally Dally Notions and Flowers by Yvonne Benne. The stands competed for the immigrant business. Ciro and Luigi came face to face with the engine of American life: You work, and then you spend.

You're a drunk, and it's no wonder your husband stays in West Virginia.

The operators were bound together by what they were running from—poverty in all its forms, despair, hunger, decimated families—as well as what they hoped to gain. Their imaginations were filled with American treasures:

It seems that the people with passion never get the thing they're after.

Sometimes redemption lands in your life like a bird and looks you straight in the eye, even when you believe you don't deserve forgiveness.

Tenderness and shame would remain closely tied in Matelda's heart until she learned the combination blocked her ability to truly love.

Ciro carried himself like a general in full regalia, when in fact he wore secondhand clothes from the donation bin.

The terrible things that happen to us in this life never make any sense when we're in the middle of them, floundering, no end in sight.

All around him during the war, Ciro saw men lie, engage in acts of cowardice, create feeble attachments to women, only to leave them—men acting in pursuit of their own comforts, men behaving without grace. And

I'll never get that far," Enza says. "We came to make money to buy our house. As soon as we do, we'll go home." "We all come here thinking that we'll go home. And then, this becomes home." The

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Death is softer by far than tyranny.

Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out; and that is far the most unhappy thing of all. -Cassandra

Thus he died, and all the life struggled out of him; and as he died he spattered me with the dark red and violent driven rain of bitter-savored blood to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers of God in glory at the birthtime of the buds.

Sophokles is a playwright fascinated in general by people who say no, people who resist compromise, people who make stumbling blocks of themselves, like Antigone or Ajax.

Every medicine is vain.