Quotes About Struggle

Ése es el nombre. Elena sabe desde hace un tiempo que ya no es ella la que manda sobre algunas partes de su cuerpo, los pies por ejemplo. Manda él. O ella. Y se pregunta si al Parkinson habría que tratarlo de él o de ella, porque aunque el nombre propio le suena masculino no deja de ser una enfermedad, y una enfermedad es femenina. Como lo es una desgracia. O una condena.

What's left of you when your arm can't even put on a jacket and your leg can't even take a step and your neck can't straighten up enough to let you show your face to the world, what's left? Are you your brain, which keeps sending out orders that won't be fol- lowed? Or are you the thought itself, something that can't be seen or touched beyond that furrowed organ guarded inside the cranium like a trove?

Y me sorprendió esa complementariedad que manteníamos a pesar de no entender por qué seguíamos juntos. Funcionábamos como si se hubiera perdido casi todo lo que alguna vez nos sostuvo, excepto la minuciosa y tácita distribución de roles y tareas que seguía apuntalando lo que habíamos armado juntos con voluntad más que con cualquier otra pasión o sentimiento.

tuvo que meter las manos en el barro, en la inmundicia, para hacer lo que había que hacer, sin cometer ni delito ni pecado, ésa soy yo.

Uno recién sabe frente a la vida, la vida es la gran prueba de nosotros mismos.

Then the voice in your head silently tells you to take your foot off your throat because just getting along shouldn't be an ambition.

Nobody notices, only you've known, you're not sick, not crazy, not angry, not sad-- It's just this, you're injured.

There is/no reasoning with need.

How to care for the injured body, the kind of body that can't hold the content it is living?

The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you.

What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like?

this nation is both its credits and debits.

Anchored in unknowing, I yearn to rise out of the restlessness of my own forms of helplessness inside a structure that constricts possibilities.

To live through the days sometimes you moan like deer. Sometimes you sigh. The world says stop that. Another sigh. Another stop that. Moaning elicits laughter, sighing upsets. Perhaps each sigh is drawn into existence to pull in, pull under, who knows; truth be told, you could no more control those sighs than that which brings the sighs about.

That time and that time and that time the outside blistered the inside of you, words outmanoeuvred years, had you in a chokehold, every part roughed up, the eyes dripping.

a friend once told you there exists the medical term—John Henryism—for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure.

You can't drive yourself sane.

it is a clean displacement of effort, will, and disappointment.

When the boys turned the corner was inflammation in the air already forming knuckles as they pummeled the body being kicked and beaten until knocked unconscious his right eye closed shut blood refusing to clot flowing from both ears were they hearing their own breathing their own ears allowing their blows to take custody of this body fallen against the hardness of the concrete floor leveled without give?

No one can get behind the feeling that caused a pause in the match, not even the player trying to put her feelings behind her, dumping ball after ball into the net. Though you can retire with an injury, you can't walk away because you feel bad.

underscore the difficulty inherent in any attempt by black artists to metabolize real rage.

Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a friend once told you there exists the medical term - John Henryism - for people exposed to the stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure.

The days of our childhood were steep steps into a collapsing mind. It looked like we rescued ourselves, were rescued. Then there are these days, each day of our adult lives. They will never forget our way through, these brothers, each brother, my brother, dear brother, my dearest brother, dear heart --

the daily diminishment is a low flame, a constant drip.