Quotes About Struggle

My mama used to say the blues is an ailment that don't like no sunshine in the room.

Things could be worse is wearing thin. I'm exhausted. I'm confused. I am effectively talking to the air.

Dying is a hard thing to get done, sometimes.

Every available avenue is paved with guilt, lined with pain, and pockmarked with shame.

There is a moth in a cocoon outside the window... [It] has labored for hours... Inside the darkness, does it know why it must struggle? Somewhere in the mass of cells and neurons that make up its tiny body, is it aware that the struggle is God's way of pumping fluid into its wings? If not for the struggle, it would come into the world with a swollen body and flightless wings. It would be a creature without strength, unable to fulfill its purpose.

the most difficult battles are not the ones fought outside the armor, but the ones within it.

No way out but through the storm now.

Most of the time when we got a tough row to plow, the Good Lord makes us fall a little short and puts another mule in the pasture. You don't never know whether you're the blind mule or the deaf mule, but you're always one or the other.

Tough times make good people and bad people.

Few things are more life affirming than watching an idea that was fledgling and frail in its infancy, seemingly destined for birth and death in almost the same breath, stretch its lungs and curl its fingers around the threads of life, and hang on with a determination that can't be understood, only felt.

I want a pain I understand instead of the one I don't. I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not

shadow of the highest evil intermingled with the light of the highest good. Maybe all lives are filled with this. Maybe it is always a choice between embracing the darkness of one or the saving grace of the other.

You'll make a lot of excuses for yourself while you're letting your life tumble down a well. It's not until you hit bottom that you see what a deep hole you're in.

Usually, the foreman found some reason to hold back some of Rusty's check, because Rusty'd showed up a few minutes late, or broke some tool, or something. He knew Rusty couldn't say anything about it, any more than all the illegals who worked down there could. Some folks just have to keep their heads down and take it, even if it's not fair, because they don't have anywhere else to go.

How odd, isn't it, that in the end, life comes to surviving more than living.

They hunt for food in Dumpsters. . . . Hunt for food . . . I passed the apartment complex with the crumbling white stucco walls, looked over, watched the Dumpster go by, but the vision stayed with me. I pictured the children climbing among the broken bottles and Wal-Mart sacks full of soiled diapers. They weren't playing. . . . The image was clear now—the little girl holding a wad of foil, the boy turning over a Hostess Cup Cakes box. . . .

When I was little, I'd attended a neighborhood potluck there with Poppy and Aunt Ruth. There were tables full of casseroles, salads, and desserts. Was it possible that, now, just down the road, children were looking for food in trash cans?

When addiction runs in your family, you can't take chances. You can't try it once to see what it's like. One time can be the beginning of something you can't stop.

But that wall won't stay built up in me. It's set on sand, and it shifts...I can't work up the tabby I need to mortar it solid.

I lean close and whisper, "Even the coloreds, do you think?" In my mind, I hear Maman hiss, Keep them bright eyes down, Miss High-Tone. You might talk like them convent sisters, but you still a colored girl. "Ssshhh, Iola Anne!" Isabelle's lashes flash wide. We both know that I've been passing on this trip.

That's how the grievin' becomes after a time. You've tossed off the black blanket, but scraps of it fall on you unexpected, your life always a quilt with a dark patch or two. The Good Lord uses those to show off the bright colors, I think.

I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don't intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.

Tightening my fingers, I held on. "Honey, the farther you go in life, the more you realize that most people aren't trying to hurt anybody. They're just trying to . . . get by. People don't always make the right decisions—even the people we love. I know Jake loves us. He's just trying to . . . find his way right now.

When I was at Mrs. Murphy's and then the Seviers' house, I thought if I could just get back to the Arcadia, that'd fix everything. I thought it'd fix me, but now I see I was fooling myself, just to keep on going, one day to the next.