Quotes About Struggle

I have no control over certain elements of my story. I can nudge my characters/story line there, but can't make them behave the way I think they should, no matter how I try.

Beneath this sod lie the remains Of one who died of growing pains.

With every anguish of our earthly part The spirit's sight grows clearer.

This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.

What happened to me is that as I grew up, I found that I was smart. My mother had insisted on that you see. Oh, but I loved to play ball. I loved the physical aspect. So you have one leg in one field, and one leg in the other and you're nowhere.

The patients there were mostly teenaged girls, with the occasional boy. I thought of us all as tigers with thorns in our paws. We were beautiful beasts who'd gotten injured by life, by loss or trauma or shock, and if we could just get the splinters out of our paws, we'd be fine. My thorn was the fact that my mother had left me. Megan

Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.

the fundamental task that was originally that of Zeus: to struggle against the ceaselessly regrouping forces of chaos so that order may prevail over disorder, cosmos and concord over discord.

The world is a chaos, an irreducible plurality of forces, instincts and drives which ceaselessly clash.

If the victor had the gods on his side, the vanquished had Cato.

Inde lacessitum primo mare, cum rudis Argo Miscuit ignotas temerato litore gentes Priamque cum ventis pelagique furentibus undis Conposuit mortale genus, fatisque per ilam Accesit mors una ratem.

I know all about violence and physical abuse because my first husband used to beat me severely when he got drunk. Once, I can remember coming home from a party and walking up our vast marble staircase at the Fifth Avenue house while he was striking me. I thought, If I just gave him one shove down the staircase I would be rid of him forever.

You know, I have had a terrible life. I married two men I really didn't like. My only daughter was killed in a car accident. My brother committed suicide. Has my life been a life for anyone to envy?

I think of these desert years of mine, not of my choosing. Maybe if it were all smooth and comfortable, if my pride and professionalism were defining life for me, God's steel-quiet, penetrating word would have been lost in the babble and sheen of success.

Lord, to the degree I don't want to do this, bless me.

Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.

Fear, poverty, alcoholism, loneliness are terminal illnesses. Emergencies, in fact.

Angel is responsible for all the AA prayers and mottoes. DON'T THINK AND DON'T DRINK. Angel put a cold wet one-sock on Tony's head and knelt beside him. "Brother, believe me … I've been there … right down there in the gutter where you are. I know just how you feel." Tony didn't open his eyes. Anybody says he knows just how someone else feels is a fool.

Sally wasn't crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn't ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her. "They can just wait until I die. I'll be dead soon, probably next year..." Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound.

Aunque nos conociéramos... hacíamos como si no. Esperábamos en la cola, mientras las otras compraban jarabe para la tos de hidrato de terpina con codeína y firmaban en el aparatoso libro de registro. A veces con el nombre verdadero, a veces con uno inventado. Me daba cuenta de que, igual que yo, tampoco sabían cuál de las dos cosas era peor. A veces veía a la misma mujer en cuatro o cinco farmacias distintas en un solo día. Mujeres o madres de adictos.

By late afternoon I'm ready to strangle Riva Chirenko's daughter. I don't know her name. Nobody calls her Mrs. Tomanovich. She's Mr. Tomanovich's wife. Riva's daughter. Irena Tomanovich's mother. She's what's wrong with all of us women, that schleppe from the steppe. But at other times it is this same woman, Riva Chirenko's daughter, that I respect, revere. If I could only accept as she has done, just accept. Acceptance is faith, Henry Miller said. I could strangle him too.

One of my mother's favorite expressions is "Life is fraught with peril.

En la profunda noche oscura del alma las licorerías y los bares están cerrados. (Del cuento Inmanejable)

I told her funny stories about our mother. How once she tried and tried to open a bag of Granny Goose potato chips, then gave up. "Life is just too damn hard," she said and tossed the bag over her shoulder.