Quotes About Struggle

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.

His inconsistency. His inability to finish anything. His sudden terrifying feelings that nothing he did mattered. His realizations that what went on in the outside world had more substance than anything in his life.

The moment when a limit is reached, when there is nothing ahead but darkness: something comes in to help that is not real. Another way all this is like madness: a mad person not helped out of his trouble by anything real begins to trust what is not real because it helps him and he needs it because real things continue not to help him.

You know the pain is part of the whole thing. And it isn't that you can say afterwards the pleasure was greater than the pain and that's why you would do it again. That has nothing to do with it. You can't measure it, because the pain comes after and it lasts longer. So the question really is, Why doesn't that pain make you say, I won't do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you don't.

Not a man of habits, though he wished to be

This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my trip—I keep trying to read it. I have gone back to it so many times, each time dreading it and each time finding it no better than the last time, that by now it has become something of an old friend. My old friend the bad novel.

First they burned her - that was last month. Actually just two weeks ago. Now they're starvng him. When he's dead, they'll burn him too. Oh, how jolly. All this burning of family members in the summertime.

Sometimes the grief was nearby, waiting, just barely held back, and I could ignore it for a while. But at other times it was like a cup that was always full and kept spilling over.

a mad person not helped out of his trouble by anything real begins to trust what is not real because it helps him and he needs it because real things continue not to help him.

as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth meanwhile was circling so far below us and we were so high up in a defective airplane that would have trouble landing.

In those days, I wanted to cry, I wanted to shout, I wanted to wring my hands and complain, and I did try to complain to some people, though I could never cry or complain as much as I wanted to. Some people listened and tried to be helpful, but they could never listen long enough; the conversation always had to come to an end.

alcoholic if necessary

When there were two of you, you decided so many little things together, such as which room to sit in with your morning coffee. When you were alone, he said, it was so miserably difficult to make those little choices.

Because we have so much eye candy and mind candy, spending so much time trying to pay the rent, all of this conspires to keep us from thinking too hard or taking action from that. Our time is stolen. So much of our daily life is stolen.

The need to document my insanity is an affliction I have not yet cured myself of...

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!

Called by the sirens and followed by an albatross.

Maybe surrender, when it was called for, was the hard part. Not the fight.

Hoy por la mañana hizo vida, pero ahora está haciendo un poco de ganas de morir.

Cuando se quiere de esa manera, es muy difícil vivir con un recuerdo que no se entiende. Como lo estoy viviendo yo ahora.

E besouro que cai de costas não se levanta nunca mais.

Não dá não dá ela repetia mostrando o dinheirinho que não dava embolado na mão. Mas dar mesmo até que ela deu bastante. Pra meu gosto até que ela deu demais. Uma corja de piolhentos pedindo e ela dando.

Quanto mais firo os que amo mais vou ferindo a mim mesma. Perco os outros e me perco, não é curioso isso? Marfa acha que só poderei me encontrar fazendo psicanálise. — Você vai se encontrar sem precisar dessas muletas, Raíza. Vai se salvar sem precisar de qualquer ajuda, estou certo disso. Um dia, de repente, dará consigo mesma e não se perderá nunca mais. Antes, terá que dar voltas e voltas até tomar o caminho certo, talvez demore um pouco.