Quotes About Struggle

The world is vicious, too huge to care about even its own survival

She has seen dieback across the West. Aspens are withering. Grazed on by everything with hooves, cut off from rejuvenating fire, whole groves are vanishing. Now she sees a forest, spreading across these mountains since before humans left Africa, giving way to second homes. She sees it in one great glimpse of flashing gold: trees and humans, at war over the land and water and atmosphere. And she can hear, louder than the quaking leaves, which side will lose by winning.

every boy carries a variation on hanging himself in the backyard branches in the rain. At least the one I saw did. I love nobody. I feel I am on the verge of loving everybody. Then I step outside my room. And he is waiting there.

This is her freedom. This one. The freedom to be equal to the terrors of the day.

And the goal of the game will be to figure out what the new and desperate world wants from you.

life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

Feeling for the first time what it meant to kick open doors that kept closing, no matter how many legends had already passed through.

The most wondrous products of four billion years of life need help.

That's the trouble with people, their root problem. Life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right next.

That's the ruling story on this planet. We live suspended between love and ego. Maybe it's different in other galaxies. But I doubt it.

I never knew how strong a drug other people are." "The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused." "How long does it take to . . . detox?" He considers. "Nobody's ever clean.

I never knew how strong a drug other people are. The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused. How long does it take to . . . detox? He considers. Nobody's ever clean.

Define a feather when condemned to the wind. Say how the shaft tapers, straining to be weightless. Describe what the vanes do on the air, how they luff and ruffle and flute, how the barbs somersault on the downward curve of their resisting ride.

And she can hear, louder than the quaking leaves, which side will lose by winning.

Clicks and chatter disturb the cathedral hush. The air is so twilight-green she feels like she's underwater. It rains particles—spore clouds, broken webs and mammal dander, skeletonized mites, bits of insect frass and bird feather. . . . Everything climbs over everything else, fighting for scraps of light. If she holds still too long, vines will overrun her.

A woman of her skills! Just because she fucked up, does she think the world can't use her? we're down to gallons here. Hours and ounces. And she's going to roll over and die?

We're sorry. We didn't know how hard it is for you to grow back.

I didn't know how to be a parent. Most of what I did, I remembered from what she used to do. I made enough mistakes on any one day to scar him for life. My only hope was that all the errors somehow canceled each other out.

She sees it in one great glimpse of flashing gold: trees and humans at war over the land and water and atmosphere. And she can hear, louder than the quaking leaves, which side will lose by winning.

Chester's death had almost killed him. All the grief over Alyssa that he'd suppressed in order to protect me tore out of him when the crippled old beast gave up.

Humans are so frail. How have they survived long enough to wreak all the shit they have?

Their eyes smiled at the best joke in creation, while their shoulders bowed under the weight of a thing too heavy to bear.

I'd given up on understanding my own hidden temperament a long time ago. Lots of monsters inhabited my sunless depths, but most of them were nonlethal.

pronounced. Spontaneous improvement no longer seemed likely. Behavioral therapy had