Quotes About Struggle

The merrel also knew its wing had not healed. But I could reach a great height once more before it failed me, it said. And from there I would fold my wings and plummet to the earth as if a hare or a fawn had caught my eye; but it would be myself I stooped toward. It would be a good flight and a good death. And so I eat their dead things cut up on a pole, dreaming of my last flight.

There were some things that took life and broke it, not merely into meaninglessness, but with active malice flung the pieces farther, into hell.

You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.

It is not a comfortable passion.

Her betrothed is a lout, her father is a boor; and now her brother is trailing around looking like a thunderstorm about to burst. Men are not sensible creatures.' 'Thank you,' said Robin.

She had not meant to name them, but she could not help herself; and having done so she thought, Let their names be symbols that their lives are worth the keeping. Let them struggle a little the harder, to keep their names.

Although when there were too many people around- which there certainly were today- it was hard even to remember to say thank you: all those people were like drowning.

It is not so easy as running and not running.

The burden she carried was different from yours, and it had worn on her for many years. When I knew her she had forgotten joy, although I believe Arlbeth gave her a little back again.

It wasn't the work of the Chalice she minded. It was the vast unfathomable burden of its responsibility. She still felt the Chalice was incomprehensibly beyond her—even wished that it were incomprehensibly beyond her, so she could give up.

Post-traumatic shock, phooey. Seemed to me the trauma was trotting right along with me, like a dog on a leash with its owner. I was the dog. I

He was a vampire. I was a human. We weren't supposed to have any bonds between us, except straightforward generic ones of murderous antagonism and so on.

He ran till he was blind with running, till he thought he had lived his entire life running, one foot pounding down in front of the other endlessly, till his bones were on fire with it, and every time either foot struck the ground his whole body cried out against the jolt. He set his teeth and ran on.

It's funny, because I had thought, living through those first two months after the night at the lake, that the great crisis was about What I Was or Who I'd Become or What Terrible Thing Was Wrong With Me (and About to Go Wronger) and Why All Was Changed As a Result. But I was still struggling against the idea that all *was* changed.

Poor Mom. At least she was trying. I realized that I was grateful for the useless tangle, even if it was useless. Because she was doing something. She hadn't averted her eyes from the fact that I needed help. She merely had no clue how much help, or what kind.

Oh, big surprise. Something wasn't going to be easy. I tried to rouse myself, to react. I failed.

My voice came out high and strange, and sticky with wretchedness: 'Why? I know about having to - *invite* - one of your kind.' For about six months when you're thirteen or fourteen it's every teenage girl's favourite story: because it's about finding out you have *power*.

I am not strong enough, she said. She had never said this aloud to anyone before—anyone but her bees. I know too little, and I do not learn fast enough. And there are not enough hours in the day. And the land has been bent away from true too far and for too long.

Tor said in a strangled voice, He will apologize, or I'll give HIM a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all.

I could wallpaper a room with rejection letters.

The battle at Verdun can best be imagined as some monstrous ball game, in which two teams of giants push a boulder to and fro across impossible terrain. For months the Germans had pushed the French south, towards Verdun; now the French were pushing the Germans back to the north, towards their start-line positions of 21 February. The entry fee in this contest for a worthless piece of terrain was a great number of lives.

In all but killing terms, the battle ended in the last days of September and the main reason it ended was mud.

The veterans of the Somme have gone now but while they lived they talked incessantly of the mud of the Somme, mud which permeated everything, clogged rifles, flowed like lava into dugouts and trenches, sucked off boots, drowned wounded men and horses and made movement either impossible or a tremendous physical effort. To fight on the Somme was bad enough; to also fight the mud of the Somme was simply too much.

At Neuve Chapelle in March 1915, the British lost almost 13,000 men in three days; at Loos in September, 59,000 men in six weeks, but most of them fell in the first two days; neither attack gained more than a few hundred yards of useless, shell-pitted, corpse-strewn ground.