Quotes About Struggle

A brain tumor can radically change your self-identity. Even if your tumor is removed and you are doing well, you may continue to see yourself as someone who is very different from other people.

Having a brain tumor is like finding yourself in the middle of a dark forest. You're not sure how you got there, and you don't know how you'll get out.

Reborn here in this grubby old hospital, surrounded by the sick and the dying, people who deserve a second chance far more than he does. But it isn't the pink-and-white cooing kind of rebirth. It's more like being wrenched from a warm, dark, comfortable place and forced out into a bright, frightening world where nothing is certain.

John G. turns on him, hands on hips, hair caked with snow. 'Hey, buddy, let me tell you something. Drugs are the only thing I got. I am a drug addict. That's all I've ever been and that's all I'll ever be. Even if I'm not putting a needle in my arm or pipe in my mouth right this second, the thought is still in my mind.' He taps the side of his head. 'And if I decide I'm gonna get high to deal with the pressures in my life, there's not a fuckin' thing you can do about it.

Just when he thinks he's adjusting to anxiety as a constant condition, Jake feels several internal organs shrinking.

See? They only get idiots to do these jobs." John G. stands there with his eyelids throbbing. Should he take a swing at the guy? After all, he's got nothing left to lose. On the other hand, this job is the only thing between him and the abyss. Everything else that marked his place in the world is gone. He struggles to decide for a few seconds and then goes back to the motorman's cabin.

Just standing on the slope, waiting, I felt helplessly committed with the other two. I started hating the predicament, and then hating climbing, utterly and in general, and wishing myself out of it.

Balzac clearly is haunted by these Faustian figures, who seek to go beyond what is permitted to ordinary humans, only to reach an impasse where their very medium of expression is blocked or destroyed.

There is no resting place; you have to keeping trying to get it all down on the page. Silence threatens: as for Balzac's fictional Dante, writing is a constant skirmish with nothingness.

When we came and rented the North Perth home, my father had a little ice chest, and on top of the ice chest was a radio. And we were sitting at our lunch time on Sunday eating dinner after church, and my Mum says, 'Look where we've ended up. We've got a table cloth on our table, we've got food on our plate, and we're listening to music.' That was a big thing for my mother. - Mrs Helen Doropoulos, Greece

An Italian migrant once told me that … and he said, 'To be a migrant is both a curse and a blessing, because you will always hang between two countries.' This is a very good country, I quite enjoy it, it's fine, but I miss my country [Holland]. But I can't go back anymore my country's not my country anymore. Tinie Nieuwenhoven's, Dutch

We are poor judges of when we are learning well and when we're not. When the going is harder and slower and it doesn't feel productive, we are drawn to strategies that feel more fruitful, unaware that the gains from these strategies are often temporary.

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all.

When Michelangelo finally completed painting over 400 life size figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he is reported to have written, "If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all.

When Michelangelo finally completed painting over 400 life size figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he is reported to have written, "If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all." What appeared to his admirers to have flowed from sheer genius had required four torturous years of work and dedication.20

Interacting with other people does not come naturally to me; it is a strain and requires effort, and since it does not come naturally I feel like I am not really myself when I make that effort. I feel fairly comfortable with my family, but even with them I sometimes feel the strain of not being alone.

Sometimes I envy religious people for the comfort of believing. It would make everything so much easier.

I don't know why I felt so closed and bitter and threatened by the things I did not like.

She had all the best things wrong with her—incest, insanity, drug addiction, bulimia, alopecia: you name it. All the perfect stuff for a memoir. She's so lucky.

Credo che nel mio cervello ci sia una specie di setaccio che impedisce un rapido (e tanto meno simultaneo) travaso dei pensieri in parole. Un po' come il filtro nello scarico della vasca da bagno; c'è qualcosa che trattiene i miei pensieri nel cervello, e così bisogna cavarli a forza, come quegli schifosi grovigli di capelli bagnati.

You're so intent on making your life impossible. It doesn't bode well. Life is difficult enough, you know.

No quería pensar en esto y procuraba no pensar. Probablemente ese era el motivo de que me sintiera tan aturdido. Cada vez que notaba la formación de un pensamiento, me decía: "No pienses eso, no pienses eso, no pienses eso". Aquello era como liquidar a un montón de moscas con un matamoscas

Isn't that what people say: it is better this way? Meaning I cannot bear it but I will. I will close my eyes and stumble forward into the darkness.

My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it. There are weeks when I wonder the same, whole stretches of terrible time. It is hard to believe you can feel so bad and still not die.