Quotes About Struggle

I have been so alone on this journey, cut off from my past. However hard I try, I will always feel alien and strange. And now I've stumbled on a fellow outsider, one who speaks my language without saying a word.

And anyway, how do you talk about losing everything?

When I think about what would make me happy, I am struck by how basic my desires are. I want to feel that I'm progressing through life; I want a meaningful relationship and an engaging career. I want to live in a place that feels like home. What I want is what everyone wants - so ordinary as to be cliched. Why is that so hard to find?

notice." The false cheer in her voice is evidence of how

wage an ongoing war with the elements...we have to push back against the unruly outdoors to keep chaos at bay.

When you live on a farm, everyone is uncomfortable much of the time. Too cold, too warm, dirty, bone tired, banged up, injured by a tool or hot grate - too preoccupied to worry much about each other

I remember her words to me when I left school: Your mind will be your comfort. It is, sometimes. And sometimes it isn't.

I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

There are many ways to be crippled, I've learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.)

It's brave to resist the pull of the familiar. To be selfish about your own needs. I wrestle with that every day.

Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again. And still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts on clothes. So when she says it's okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything. And

am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I am broken inside

We took away their country and their means of support. It was for this and against this that they made war. Could anyone expect less?

made it through this year because I had to, because I had no options. But now that I've experienced comfort and safety, how can I go back? These thoughts take me to the edge of despair, so I will myself—I force myself—not to have them.

be totaled; we can't afford a new one.

Molly is the opposite. So many things have gone wrong for her in her seventeen years that she's come to expect it. When something does go right, she hardly knows what to think.

Christina Baker Kline

that 90 percent of them had died by 1620, almost entirely a result of contact with settlers, who brought foreign diseases and

And though they were called savages, even a prominent English general, Philip Sheridan, had to admit, "We took away their country and their means of support. It was for this and against this that they made war. Could anyone expect less?

Maisie sensed it first. She wouldn't stop crying. Since she was a month old, when our mother got sick,

It was worse for Mam, who discovered on the boat she was again with child and could hardly keep any food down. But even with all of this, as I stood on the lower deck outside our dark, cramped rooms in steerage, watching the oily water churn beneath the Agnes Pauline, I felt my spirits lift. Surely, I thought, we would find a place for ourselves in America.

Despite the landlord's disapproval, the sweltering heat, the gloomy rooms, and the cacophony of strange noises, so unfamiliar to my country ears, I felt another swell of hope.

father's drinking—did I mention that?