Quotes About Struggle

Life was the cat that dragged the parrot downstairs by its tail; his head banged against every step.

they continued under the same roof, with good days and bad weeks, swallowed rage, occasional outbursts and increasing social isolation. All this no longer made him feel interesting; instead, he felt a failure and an outcast.

I tried to save her, I failed. I tried to stop her drinking, I failed. I don't blame her, it's way beyond that. And I remember what you told me back then—that she was more likely to get hurt than me. But I can't take it anymore. I can't face another ten days of it, let alone another ten years. So Martha's going to look after her.

Those who survive, or excel, or overmaster are merely those who are better organised and wave bigger guns; those who are better at killing.

Ás veces penso que o sentido da vida é desgastarnos para reconciliarnos coa súa perda final, demostrándonos que, á marxe do tempo que lle leve, a vida non está en absoluto á altura da súa propia fama.

now some were keeping themselves at bay, having reached the age when illness arrives. There were emails about prostate cancer, and back operations, and that little bit of heart trouble which maybe wasn't such good news. Vitamin pills and statins were consumed, while the World Service kept them company in their sleeplessness. And soon, no doubt, the funeral years would begin.

You still don't get it. You never did, and you never will. So stop even trying.

So now he better understood how couples clung to their own story—each, often, to a separate part of it—long after it had gone cold on them, even to the point where they were not sure they could bear one another. Bad love still contained the remnant, the memory, of good love—somewhere, deep down, where neither of them any longer wanted to dig.

You bet on a relationship, it fails; you go on to the next relationship, it fails too: and maybe what you lose is not two simple minus sums but the multiple of what you staked. That's what it feels like, anyway. Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.

And in your opinion, the notion that everything works out in the end, and the counter-notion that nothing ever does, are both equally banal.

And you do come out of it, that's true. After a year, after five. But you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

Dabei steckte mir nach meiner traurigen Jugend das altbekannte, für die späte Pubertät so typische Gefühlsgemisch aus Stolz und Verzweiflung noch tief in den Knochen, wenn man sich hochnäsig für etwas Besseres hält, aber gleichzeitig an sozialer Paranoia leidet.

When I met you, I thought we were meant for each other, even though, in some ways, seemed very different and we kept fighting. But now ... What? Now I think we're meant for each other, but we are doing to each other, to become the people we become. You know what I mean.

Revolutions are usually started by people who are hungry. Sure, there are ideological revolutions, but, again, people rise up because they feel that the alternative is no longer livable. They have to be desperate.

Father can be the person you most hate and most fear, yes, but deep down you expect that he'll be the one to save you.

Are you saying that the people here aren't desperate? I think you're wrong. I think they are and they just don't know it. Oh, they're desperate, all right, but so desperate that they're clinging to what they have.

She feels sick. She hates this world.

We're wretches but we're still capable of this - songs rising up inside us.

All my life I have struggled with making decisions—which I blame on being a true Libra—

Sometimes, the only way out of the fire is through the fire, m'boy.

She didn't usually mind being just a bit in over her head. She generally flailed like a becalmed ship, irritable and purposeless and panicked, when things were simple.

Fear did rather play havoc with one's self of time.

Maybe we're born with a full set of qualities, some fine, some not so fine, and none of us knows what will bring out everything that lives within us. And sometimes it's the fine qualities that cause us trouble, and the not so fine that save us.

She wanted to buckle, lie on her side and gasp like an eviscerated fish. She held her breath against it, but her mouth parted. She cared naught for living in the moment, but apparently her body was sensible. It wanted to breathe.