Quotes About Struggle

At the end of his life, which had included financial ruin in the Great Depression, his wife's barbiturate addiction and death by overdose, and then his own lung cancer, Doc said, "It was enough to have been a unicorn." What he meant was that he got to do art. It was magic to him that his hands and mind got to make wonderful things, that he didn't have to be just another goat or horse.

Always know your protagonists inside and out. As a writer, show us things about them we've never before considered; make us care about who they are and what they want, so much that it's gut-wrenching to see them roadblocked and exhilarating to see them triumph over obstacles. You have to live inside them, through them--inhabit them as an actor would and tell stories about things that matter immensely to the both of you.

Social government was never Superman's arena. It is possible that the constant pressures thrust upon him as an emerging world leader could bend even a man of steel to the breaking point?

Right now, I've got the weight of several worlds on my shoulders. My best friend is living in a cancer ward, and there's nothing I can do for him. The Serpents have hired the Jester to spark race riots with faked news stories, and I don't know how to smoke him out. My enemies are hiding all around, watching everything I do, and I can't find them. For the first time in months I find myself in the familiar, paralyzing grip of overwhelming depression.

And all the times she'd been called a control freak, they were right, but they didn't understand why: because what she couldn't control was terrifying. Because what we couldn't control was death and that was too much for her brain, that was what sometimes made her so frightened that she could not make a mental connection with anything else, made her stop in the street and want to buckle over.

From "I Exist" in Every Lyric Tells A Story. His mother thought he was a loser His father thought he was a bum Plenty of times he felt like running But he really had nowhere to run He fought it with everything he had With his brains and with his fists And whenever anyone told him he was nobody He'd tell himself "I exist

From "Rock Star" in Every Lyric Tells A Story. What happens to a rock star When he gets too old to perform When his public has faded Like the strength his voice once had? What happens to a rock star When he's treated like yesterday's news And the only reviews that he gets are ones that are bad?

What's become of my life? Why do I feel so burned out? I should be happy. I used to be happy. Where did it all go?

strained time-ridden faces, distracted from distraction by distraction.

gravitational pull" of depression by reminding you in key ways of what science has now shown: it is actually okay to

Running is real and relatively simple…but it ain't easy.

It's hell when the person you know you are isn't the person people see when they look at you.

I can't swim farther than from here to the far side of a whiskey glass.

My only point is that it's also possible once in a while to do everything right and still have things go wrong.

Like all human beings I want to be changed, transformed - made more whole, more loving, more free. I want to live with a sense of meaningful purpose. I want to coax forth the angel of my better nature. But like all human beings I can't make this happen by force of will... I need others. I need friends, companions, wise teachers who know the struggle and who can be trusted to remind me what I'm doing here. I need others...to make my life into a source of redemption, wisdom, friendship, and hope.

Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.

If Pleasant Carter was jealous of his dashing younger brother with his automobile and his pockets full of crisp dollar bills, he never expressed it. But what he saw happening all around him made it harder and harder for him to see himself as a lifelong dirt farmer. A.P.'s wandering gene was always getting the better of him.

A.P., Sara, and Maybelle were at their best when they were plying the sharper edges of private and personal pain.

A.P. had to go out into those Appalachian hills and scare up twenty or thirty new songs a year to feed the hungry maws of their record company and their fans.

The church was the most important institution in Poor Valley. It served as a family of families and helped that larger family push back against the uglier potencies of nature: weather, disease, death, and the darkness in one's own heart.

Charles Edwin Anson Markham (April 23, 1852 - March 7, 1940) was an American poet.. "Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!" Markham, Edwin

She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.