Quotes About Strength

Get up." Those were the first words I ever heard. Open my eyes, see a girl, black and blue all over, dried blood along her thighs. Red brown stains smeared across the hairless juncture between. "Get up and take a bath, Alice," the man in the blue shirt said, and Alice did. I did. That's how I was born. Naked, hairless, covered in blood like all babies. Named, bathed and then taken out into the world.

The thing about hearts is that they always want to keep beating. ~Kyla

God-monster, ruler of my world. ~Kyla

Sometimes, in the afternoon, if the soaps aren't any good, I'll watch movies about angry, scared women who fight back or teenage girls who suffer but then overcome. There are always shower scenes in them, shots of the women scrubbing their abuse or grief away. I don't understand this. You can't make yourself clean like that, and fresh-scrubbed skin only invites attention.

he has martyred me, but for no cause

Our bodies are to be celebrated, despite our individual limitations.

Find a miracle, hold onto it, and keep going.

To be asked to relive this horribly painful part of our lives and then be questioned on whether we could have or should have done more than we did to help ourselves is, frankly put, insulting. The truth of the matter is, the person being questioned survived. So that in and of itself is a big deal.

A pen is a furious weapon. But it needs a rage of will.

Yesterday from my office window I saw a crippled girl negotiating her way across the street, her shoulders squarely braced. At each jerky movement her hair flew back like an annunciatory angel, and I saw she was the only dancer on the street.

Don't be scared of your hunger. If you're scared of your hunger, you'll just be one more ninny like everyone else.

You just stood up to your mother.... I should think now you could take on the world.

Silly little plastic belt, made for a skinny pinny; it could barely tie around her. She managed, though - a tiny white bow. Waiting, she folded her hands and realized how every single time she went by this hospital, the same two thoughts occurred to her: that she'd been born here and that her father's body had been brought here after his suicide. She'd been through some things, but never mind. She straightened her back. Other people had been through things, too.

You've been through a great deal," his mother conceded. "But the back strengthens to the burdens it has to bear, and I'd like to see a little more backbone in you.

You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think. And as a result of that pain, I became bigger.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee . . . O Lord, abide with me.

Lucy. You deal with everything.

And he said, "Lucy. You deal with everything.

God, I'm scared,' he said, quietly. She almost said, 'Oh, stop. I hate scared people.

the young, he thought, could withstand the rigors of love.

Sometimes I thought I would die from the pain of our separating, and the pain it caused my girls, but I did not die, and I am here, and so is William.

As a matter of fact, I could argue that none of us has a center of gravity. That we're tugged and pulled by competing forces every minute and we hold on as best we can.

Pam's determination was almost always stronger than her disappointments

But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable. Dottie