Quotes About Struggle

I press my eyes shut and will the thoughts away. But they refuse to comply, and instead, they lodge themselves in the crevasses of my brain, poking out just enough that I know they're still with me, like a tiny splinter in your baby toe that gnaws away at you with every step you take.

Outside, with Labor Day having come and gone, summer is fighting a dying battle against the fall air. The leaves are hanging perilously on the trees, knowing full well they're going to make the plunge, clinging on as if they stand a chance not to. The garbage smell that has wafted around us for the better part of August is dissipating, ushered out with the humidity, and in its place a briskness is filtering in, like something you'd smell from a bottle of Tide.

Nothing is different here and now than it used to be: The people whom I need most are gone, and the ones who remain do nothing to help me get to where I need to go. Different names, different faces, but the end result is still the same.

After Megan's death, Tyler spiraled downward into an abyss of steely blankness, as if Megan were the only color in his life, and without it, there was only white, black, and gray. He numbed his pain with booze, and slowly, wrenchingly, pulled away from all of us, isolating himself in an angry cocoon, where none of us could reach him and he didn't want to be reached.

Without struggle there is no progress.

Because even though the truth can set you free, that doesn't mean it won't be painful.

You should have had the decency to die when you needed to." "Sorry," I admitted. "I've been going through a bit of a rebellious streak. I swear it's almost over.

Angus looked at Hamish. "I hate it when Mom and Dad fight." Hamish smoothed his brother's messy hair. "Me too.

All these years I'd thought being a spy was challenging. Turns out, being a girl is the tricky part.

I've thrown enough punches in my life to know when someone is hurting.

And I remembered with a pang what had happened to me the previous summer - that even Gallagher Girls aren't always as strong as they need to be.

Should alcoholics go to liquor stores?

Sitting there that day, I knew that the only thing I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, hoping none of the secrets on my shoulders would make me lose my balance.

For the first time I realize how perilous peace can be. I appreciate the tightrope that my grandfather has spent his whole life trying to walk. And now, more than ever, I grow terrified that I'm going to make us all fall down.

You switched the days," I said, dismayed. "You blew the tire. You..." I trailed off, probably because the next words out of my mouth were either going to be "You are enough to do this?" or "You're destined for a life of crime." It was a toss-up either way.

Pain seared through me again-a hot, burning stab in my gut-and yet my body found strength I didn't know I had, correcting as I fell.

I know. I'm sorry." And the bizarre part is that I really am. I want to be good, to use the right fork and wear a pretty linen dress to breakfast. I want to be the girl in the pictures upstairs. But I can't be. That girl is dead.

Crazy. I went crazy.

I was thirteen when I saw my mother die, when I told my story. When I started "having a hard time," as my grandfather likes to say. Would they have locked me up if I'd been thirty? If I'd been a boy? It's a question I do not dare to ask.

I know too well how dangerous hope can be, how it grows and sometimes dies, taking its host with it.

My breath is coming too hard. I want to cry. To scream. To die.

I am my own worst enemy. But if there were to be a second place, it would go to this girl.

And then, more than anything, I wanted to stop hearing Macey's words, It's okay for you to like him, because sometimes not liking someone is easier.

Caroline knew what this really is... It is a fourteen-day celebration of a time when people like them killed people like me. - Princess Ann