Quotes About Struggle

I feel like... the boy lost somewhere between the torment of memory and a few fragile shards of hope.

No matter how invisible I feel, I will always be wrapped in the memory of life as a captive. —Quebrado

Slavery all day, and then, suddenly, by nightfall- freedom!

that proved the

At the steamy train station in New Orleans, horrifying signs above drinking fountains announce: COLORED. WHITE. Confused, I drink out of both. Why should it matter if a stream of coo, refreshing water pours into my mouth or another?

All women are misfits. We do not fit into this world without amputations.

My strength and my weakness are twins in the same womb.

The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

When will women not be compelled to view their bodies as science projects, gardens to be weeded, dogs to be trained? When will a woman cease to be made of pain?

Her life seemed to her a great engineering work scarcely begun. Lately more excavation than construction had occurred. She had lost a sense of her own invincibility. In that way she was no longer archetypically American.

Don't be ridiculous! You waste less time than anyone I know.' 'You don't know, sweetie. For years I've had down days. Days I just can't cope. Can't get on with anything. Can't get up and out or at it or whatever.' 'Not enough to keep you from being invaluable politically.

An new idea is rarely born like Venus attended by graces. More commonly it's modeled of baling wire and acne. More commonly it wheezes and tips over.

She felt pride and shame wash through her. Mala, the woman who acted. To thrust herself forward into the world.

it seems as if people fought hardest against those who had a little more than themselves or often a little less, instead of the lugs who got richer and richer.

With living creatures / one must begin very early / to dwarf their growth : / the bound feet, / the crippled brain, / the hair curlers, / the hands you / love to touch.

Variant selves haunt the corridors of my brain, people my novels, crowd in like ghosts drawn to blood when friends or strangers tell me secrets, hand me their troubles, sweaters knit of hair and wire.

People were not getting back what they wanted for their sold labor. Taxes grew and services shrank. Prices rose and quality decayed. Everywhere people felt used and betrayed and coerced and cheated.

He likes to complain. It feels natural to him. He was unhappy a long time, and complaining makes him feel as if he's warding off greater evil.

You who had not been allowed to finish tenth grade but sent to be a frightened chambermaid, carried home every week armloads of books from the library rummaging them late at night, insomniac, riffling the books like boxes of chocolates searching for the candied cherries, the nuts, hunting for the secrets, the formulae, the knowledge those others learned that made them shine and never ache.

There is a bird in my chest with wings too broad with beak that rips me wanting to get out. I have called it an idiot parrot. I have called it a ravening eagle. But it sings. Bird of no name your cries are red and wet on the iron air. I open my mouth to let you out and your shining blinds me.

The anger of the weak never goes away, Professor, it just gets a little moldy. It molds like a beautiful blue cheese in the dark, growing stronger, and more interesting. The poor and the weak die with all their anger intact and probably those angers go on growing in the dark of the grave like the hair and the nails.

The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

It came out an overpowering story, hinting at sickly relatives dying in inaccessible parts of the island, cross-country journeys, and a noble, if exhausted Ramillies crawling gamely home to be persuaded by an adoring wife to snatch what rest he might before attempting the feat of endurance which lay before him as a passenger on an almost epic flight.

It was a little skirmish across a century.