Quotes About Struggle

Fifty million Arabs in seven neighboring Arab states, five regular Arab armies, a million Arabs in Palestine—against 650,000 Jews.

At one point in my life, I learned how to think. I used to know how to feel. In war, these are lessons best forgotten.

He hated the idea of killing people he could not hate.

We were soldiers, but even before we were showed how to kill our enemies, they taught us how to kill ourselves.

How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?

Le mal de vivre, 'the pain of life.' Qu'll faut bien vivre... 'that we must live with, or endure.' Vaille que vivre, this is difficult but it is something like 'we must live the life we have. We must soldier on.

it's okay to have impossible goals, because if you follow your unreachable star no matter how hopeless or far, your heart will be peaceful when you're dead, even though you might be scorned and covered with scars like I am while you're still alive.

The moment I saw the gate I had a strong thought to turn around and throw myself headfirst down the steep stone steps or just let myself free-fall backward into the pillowy softness of eternity, and it wouldn't matter if I bumped and bounced like a cabbage all the way down until I hit the bottom and then rolled out to sea, because at least I'd be safe and dead.

The sound of those doors, locking him in, locking her out, was the sound of her defeat and failure.

while the hookers and junkies spun like windblown litter in their wake.

Suicide feels like One Authentic Thing. Suicide feels like Meaning of Life. Suicide feels like having the Last Word. Suicide feels like stopping Time Forever. But of course this is all just delusion, too! Suicide is just part of life, so it is part of the delusion.

Jinsei no Itami

What's the storm called, anyway?" "Progress." She grinned.

it wouldn't matter if I bumped and bounced like a cabbage all the way down until I hit bottom and then rolled out to sea, because at least I'd be safe and dead.

Emma Goldman wrote an autobiography called Living My Life that Jiko is always trying to get me to read, but I haven't gotten around to it yet because I'm too busy living my life or trying to figure out how not to.

It's the cold fish dying in your stomach feeling. You try to forget about it, but as soon as you do, the fish starts flopping around under your heart and reminds you that something truly horrible is happening.

the fire that sparked us into being, is our unmaking.

And when he got home he started on Mumma. He hated her then, because in her fatness and untidiness and drabness she reminded him of what he himself was when he was sober.

Elva had said nothing to anyone. She prayed earnestly that she was all right, explaining over and over again to God what the doctor had said, and how she couldn't properly look after the children she already had. Elva liked to pray in front of a statue similar to the one in her mother's living-room. She was not praying to the statue, but it was a kind of magical doll that kept her thoughts focussed on the Being to whom she prayed.

Then she said, with piteous defiance, If I could love her, the Good Lord could, and he won't be too hard on an old lady who didn't have an easy life.

chasing a lie smaller than her dreams.... from: Save Me the Plums

in a squalid, run-down house in the worst

Very few people of our generation or the next will reach adulthood without experiencing the sort of unhappiness you can't really deal with on your own. We're still in the minority, so the media lump us together as The Oversensitive Young, or whatever the latest catchphrase is, but eventually that will change.

Who hasn't wanted to die at one time or another?