Quotes About Struggle

It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

For a while I considered dropping out of Barnard to help. It felt unbearably selfish, just downright wrong, to be indulging myself with an education in the liberal arts at a fancy private college while Mom and Dad were on the streets. But Lori convinced me that dropping out was a lamebrained idea. It wouldn't do any good

woman grabbed my shirt and tried to pull me over the chain. "It's all right," I told her. "My dad does stuff like this all the time." "He should be arrested!" she shouted. "Okay, kids

My favorite books all involved people dealing with hardships.

You know you're down and out when the Okies laugh at you.

Mom waved at the crowd. "You know you're down and out when Okies laugh at you," she said. With our garbage-bag-taped window, our roped-down hood, and the art supplies tied to the roof, we'd out-Okied the Okies. The thought gave her a fit of the giggles.

Mom painted dozens of variations and studies of the Joshua tree. We'd go with her and she'd give us art lessons. One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. You'd be destroying what makes it special, she said. It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

months pregnant. Dad, who had fixed

He groped me! And he's wanking off!' Mom cocked her head and looked concerned. 'Poor Stanley,' she said. 'He's so lonely.

Unfortunately, theory don't always carry the day.

For a while I considered dropping out of Barnard to help. It felt unbearably selfish, just downright wrong, to be indulging myself with

Besides, I'm not taking anything that isn't mine, not forcing folk to do anything they don't want to do, just helping out the people of Claiborne County who through no fault of their own are in an awful bind. Obey the law and starve. Or break the law and eat. Not a lot to ponder there.

I feel very tired. Is that all people will ever think when they see Aunt Faye? People who've never gone without find it easy to pass judgment on those who've struggled.

Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

You just got here, Mary Montgomery Canon. You and your new pastor husband and all your holier-than-thou notions. Your bags aren't even unpacked. You have no idea what help you need. And by the time you find out it will be too late.

Dad, I said, you'll never build the Glass Castle.

Quelle drôle d'idée. Croire en Dieu. On ne pouvait pas croire en Dieu quand on jouait à la cesta punta. Ni quand on traitait toute l'année avec la souffrance et la maladie, ou qu'à la maison le suicide était un sport national, et qu'en guise de complies, on allait se recueillir régulièrement devant un petit ex-voto formolé de Joseph Staline.

Existence is an imperfection.

I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way . In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way : I was In the way for eternity.

Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines say what this man is before he dies, or what mankind is before it has disappeared.

Genius is not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances.

Once Right has taken hold of a man exorcism cannot drive it out.