Quotes About Struggle

She had brushed her teeth before vomiting as well, never able to utterly crush the optimistic streak in her nature.

She tried to walk more slowly up the hill. God, her mind was racing, racing in neutral

As Anne watched her, she could not help thinking of the age-old question every woman asks herself at some time or other: do I have to swallow it?

Balance was so elusive: either it was like this, too fast, or there was the heavy thing like wading through a swamp to get to the end of a sentence.

They had never met, but she had come to understand what had driven Victor's wife to seek refuge in a full set of Snoopy mugs.

David dropped the hose on the gravel path, thinking how useless to him Eleanor had become. She had been rigid with terror for too long. It was like trying to palpate a patient's swollen liver when one had already proved that it hurt. She could only be persuaded to relax so often.

And my heart is a handful of dust, / And the wheels go over my head, / And my bones are shaken with pain, / For into a shallow grave they are thrust, / Only a yard beneath the street,' something, something, 'enough to drive one mad.

He knew that she could not help him unravel the knot of inarticulacy that he carried inside him. Instead, he could feel it tightening, like a promise of suffocation that shadowed every breath he took.

It was as if every time she played the ace of spades, it was beaten by a small trump.

Once he had taken heroin he could imagine being without it;

Edward St. Aubyn

I hate this place,' she said. 'They're going to throw me out because they say I've got a bad attitude. But I only stay in bed because I'm so depressed.

The question filled Patrick with the horror which assailed him when he was asked to consider another person's feelings. How was Debbie? How the fuck should he know? It was hard enough to rescue himself from the avalanche of his own feelings, without allowing the gloomy St Bernard of his attention to wander into other fields.

There was only one thing left to do: that authentic-sounding flush with which every junkie leaves a bathroom, hoping to deceive the audience that crowds his imagination.

As he poured himself a drink, David thought about his dead father-in-law, Dudley Craig, a charming, drunken Scotsman who had been dismissed by Eleanor's mother, Mary, when he became too expensive to keep.

The trouble with not being a psychopath. Every avenue was blocked.

Oh Jesus, thought Patrick, let me out of here. He imagined himself disappearing through the floor with a shovel and some bunk-bed slats, the theme music of The Great Escape humming in the air. He was crawling under the crematorium through fragile tunnels, when he felt himself being dragged backwards by Annette's maddening voice.

with this? Do you live as if this is true? Let's keep going. The Bible isn't just about heaven and only for the by-and-by. It is gritty and real. It is about messed-up people and the way God pursues them. The Bible describes real life—with its ups and downs and our stubborn quests for independence—better than anything

Shame is not a mirage. It is very real. A sexually violated woman feels contaminated by what has been done to her, and she really is contaminated. A person who has lived with rejection can't neutralize it with happy thoughts. Shame is like dirt. No matter how it happened, you are a mess and something has to be done about it. When you are dirty, there is no feel-as-if about it.

The details of how faith works in spiritual warfare are well known but easily forgotten.

The first steps out of shame will be the hardest. These are the anti-denial steps in which we will put shame into words. You can't do battle with something nameless, and too often shame eludes accurate identification. So we will search for words that bring shame out into the open, where it can be seen and fought against.

Everything turns inward in depression. A beautiful flower momentarily catches your attention, but within seconds the focus bends back into your own misery. You see loved ones who are celebrating a recent blessing, but before you can synchronize your feelings with theirs, you have doubled back to your own personal emptiness. Like a boomerang that always returns, no matter how hard you try, you can't get away from yourself.

When it comes to addictions, we tend to divide humanity into two groups: those who are prone toward addictions and those who aren't. The reality, of course, is very different. All human beings have already fallen into sin.

Think about the nature of depression. Life is turned inward. You already have a sense that, for all practical purposes, God is not present. Add to that your relentless condemnation and pervasive self-criticism, which have persuaded you that God doesn't love you. You couldn't be a more obvious spiritual target if you painted a bull's-eye on your chest.