Quotes About Struggle

there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull.

I remember, in hot floods, the way he slept, still as death, with his face washed flat, stony as a carved tomb and exquisite. His weakness and his ravening bitter needs were terrible, and beautiful, and irresistible as an earthquake. He scalded or smothered anyone he needed, but his needing and the hurt that it caused me were the most life I have ever had. Remember what a poor thing I have always been and forgive me.

My heart died. Arty would despise her. But Mama told me to go on hoping. Go ahead and love her, Mama said. I've wondered since whether those were Mama's last words, the final sizzle of her synapses.

the top head would have controlled everything and made his poor little butt-brother miserable.

In the grim blasted regions where the soil had failed or the factories were shut down, whole congregations would drift through the gates

Things were slipping on me — oranges at first — then everything.

Impressed. Lord. He had nearly drowned.

If life is so bad, how come you're so happy?" "Did I say bad? I said it was tough. Nothing to make you happy like doing good on a tough job, now is there?

Jess drew the way some people drink whiskey. The peace would start at the top of his muddled brain and seep down through his tired and tensed-up body.

life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough

I suppose if alcohol had been available to me that November, I would have become a drunk. As it was, the only thing I could lose my miserable self in was books.

I ain't got no blood claim on you, and the Lord in Heaven knows I want you to have a good life with your own people. But"—her huge bass voice broke up into little squeaky pieces—"but it's killing me to see you go.

For the only time in my life I would be living with a chain-smoking semi-invalid whose chief point of pride in life was his membership in the Ku Klux Clan.

Then Jess gave himself over to the numbness that was buzzing to be let out from a corner of his brain.

Jess's feelings about Leslie's father poked up like a canker sore. You keep biting it, and it gets bigger and worse instead of better.

all my ancestors were from the South and some even fought and died for the losing side. Perhaps that's why I was long resigned to my failure to publish.

She had nothing against any of the other guests, but once she started she saw no way to stop. There was nothing to do but turn the hose against every arriving guest. No one coming out of the house to reason with her was safe either.

One of the novels that was hardest for me to write had to deal with the horrible slaughter of war. I almost didn't finish Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom for just that reason.

For the first few seconds, Jess kicked and struggled against the strong arms. Then Jess gave himself over the numbness that was buzzing to be let out from the corner of his brain. - Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson

We're all broken, Laura. And we're all looking for someone to blame. God's the easiest target. We let ourselves believe that if He loved us, things would be perfect. But we both know that's not true.

The classic 'seven-year itch' may not be a case of familiarity breeding ennui and contempt, but the shock of having someone you thought you knew all too well suddenly seem a stranger. When that happens, you are compelled to either recommit or get the hell out. There are many such times in a marriage.

We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view is far more holistic, regarding faith as a whole-body experience. Sometimes it is, as W.H. Auden described it, 'a matter of choosing what is difficult all one's days as if it were easy.

I've learned that everything that thinks and feels," she said, "grows by subtraction. Detachment brings perspective. Wisdom comes from letting go. It's true for humans, too, but most of them seem to struggle with it.

No one quite believed that freelancing and being a mother qualified as actual work.