Quotes About Struggle

Without conflict, there is no story. Without a story, there is no novel--only the author's self-indulgent musings.

Whatever art--writing, painting, sculpture, acting, dance, music, or any other--there will be frustration & travails. It's all worth it

Every good story challenges the protagonist, and the reader.

Conflict is the essence of a novel. Conflict, conflict, and more conflict. Oh, and choices.

The writing life is not for the timid. It's filled with challenge, uncertainty & frustration, but it's a beautiful, expansive & creative one

But in my heart of hearts, this is the kind of thing... this is what everyone is struggling with in their lives - relationships and family. To me, it's always an interesting area to mine. I'm drawn to it.

Everything you do, everything you'll ever accomplish, your life's work, your kids' life's work: horseshit. (Ecclesiastes) [God Is Disappointed in You]

What if I have it all upside down? What if I'm the one who knows nothing of God, and the people in the world are actually interceding on my behalf with their ordinary daily struggles

People try nonviolence for a week, and when it 'doesn't work,' they go back to violence, which hasn't worked for centuries.

Gandhi believed that the means of struggle a people used would shape the society that grew out of the struggle.

Yes, we shall win in the end; but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms." Oscar Wilde, 1897, on his release from Reading Gaol

every time men try to grasp something consolingly, sturdily, essentially masculine, it all too easily transforms into its opposite.

Kafka didn't save me. He just told me I was drowning.

Acceptance was not in my nature. Even as a young man it seemed to me that everywhere the world conspired against the heart, and though I knew the heart would lose, I couldn't bear to call it right.

And yet, far off, I can hear something whispering that this compulsion to do, to intrude ourselves, to improve on what is--even when wholly well intentioned, particularly when wholly well intentioned--is the source of all our troubles.

The prevailing mood was one of sullen desperation; poverty fluttered along behind us like a rag caught in the carriage door.

I turn and kick with the first one and feel myself being lifted and thrown towards the beach. It's like wrestling with an old friend, tumbling underneath then coming up for air.

But the truth is, we have done more damage to the world's impression of Jesus by feigning inaccurate perfection than we could ever cause by allowing those who don't follow Christ to see us wrestling our sins and flaws to the ground.

Real life doesn't skip the rough stuff.

How did we take this life picture and somehow misconstrue it to mean that if we just believed in Jesus, our lives would be wealthy, prosperous, and happy? Jesus doesn't promise that. Jesus says that many great things will come to those who follow Him, but He also promises a whole lot of lousy. And here's the key: The lousy isn't rotten. The lousy isn't sin. The focus of your life is not supposed to be dodging lousy. Because lousy is life. And lousy is important.

The largest problem is that we are so focused on what we deem the bigger temptations, that we are doing nothing at all about our response to the smaller ones. And it is these smaller temptations that eventually become devastating.

Life following Christ is not supposed to be a ride. It's supposed to be a fight because there is a very specific villain—and if we don't fight, he wins. If our Christianity aims only for pretty and pleasant and happy and rich, the Enemy becomes the victor.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

It's very hard to write humor.