Quotes About Struggle

And if the world refused to square with his version of reality then it was necessarily an uncaring world, a sour and sickening world, a penal colony, and he was doomed to be violently lonely in it. He bowed his head at the thought of how much strength a man would need to survive an entire life so lonely.

Power, power, power: how could the world be organized around the struggle for a thing so lonely and oppressive in the having of it?

He felt like a helium balloon straining skyward on a slender string.

Alfred believed that the real and the true were a minority that the world was bent on exterminating.

When a smoker says he wants to quit but can't, what he's really saying is, "I want to quit but I want even more not to suffer the agony of withdrawal." To argue otherwise is to jettison any lingering notion of personal responsibility.

Yes, but that's because you're not poor. When you're poor, things just happen to you. You feel like you can't control anything. You're completely at God's mercy. That's why Jesus tells us that the poor are blessed—because having nothing brings you closer to God." "That woman didn't strike me as being especially close to God.

He didn't understand what happened to him. He felt like a piece of paper that had once had coherent writing on it but had been through the wash. He felt roughened, bleached, and worn out along the fold lines.

Sometimes I think my life is nothing but one long process of bodily betrayal.

People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.

I think badness is the fundamental condition of humanity.

Walking is broken falls, the body leaning, the legs advancing to catch it.

Then again, there had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds.

She told herself a story about a daughter in a family so hungry for a daughter that it would have eaten her alive if she hadn't run away.

Her very difficulty created friction, and friction led to satisfaction...

Du skal bare huske at det ikke er en perfekt krig i en perfekt verden.

I considered, quite seriously, strangling her to death while I fucked her and then throwing myself in front of the 8:11 bus. The idea was not without its logic and appeal. But there were the bus driver's feelings to consider Ã¢â'¬Â¦

The rage inside him was titanic. How to keep from exploding? What a relief exploding was.

The shame and disorder in his house were like the shame and disorder in his head.

I'm the fat little humiliation he's married to.

She didn't need to see more people, she took money from hundreds of people at the bakery, men who stared at her indecently, old women who tweezed coins from cloth pouches as if picking a nose with thumb and finger.

Have you ever been tempted to leave a thought unspoken?" "I'm a writer, baby. Voicing thought is what I'm poorly paid and uncharitably reviewed for.

Walter non aveva mai capito come vivere, ma adesso lo capiva meno che mai

La gente è venuta in questo paese per cercare soldi o libertà. Se non hai i soldi, ti aggrappi ancora più rabbiosamente alle tue libertà.

Evil had pursued her all her life, and now the world was exploding with the color of it, and nowhere was there refuge.