Quotes About Strength

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, and The Optimist's Daughter,

I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it. That I could bear the unbearable.

Se il coraggio ti è negato va oltre il coraggio.

La vera sfida è vivere.

Women are the ones with the cojones,

How could I carry a backpack more than a thousand miles over rugged mountains and waterless deserts if I couldn't even budge it an inch in an air-conditioned motel room? The notion was preposterous and yet I had to lift that pack. It hadn't occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to.

me back and the bull that would take me forward. And so I walked on. It took all I had to cover nine miles a day. To cover nine miles a day was a physical achievement far beyond anything I'd ever done. Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart. I saw no one, but, strange as it was,

It had begun to occur to me that perhaps it was okay that I hadn't spent my days on the trail pondering the sorrows of my life, that perhaps by being forced to focus on my physical suffering some of my emotional suffering would fade away. By the end of that second week, I realized that since I'd begun my hike, I hadn't shed a single tear.

When I had no roof I made Audacity my roof. ROBERT PINSKY, "Samurai Song" Never never never give up.

God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch.

For once I didn't ache for a companion. For once the phrase a woman with a hole in her heart didn't thunder into my head. That phrase, it didn't even live for me anymore.

That was my prayer: Fuckthemfuckthemfuckthem.

The father's job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse and ride into battle when it's necessary to do so. If you don't get that from your father, you have to teach yourself." "But—I think I have already,

Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve.

Afterwards, I limped around gathering rocks and built a small crap cairn, burying the evidence before hiking on.

You don't have to be broken for me. I didn't have to be broken for him, even though parts of me were. I could be every piece of myself and he'd love me still. My appeal did not rely on my weakness or my need. It relied on everything I was and wanted to be.

was six," I said. "The father's job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse and ride into battle when it's necessary to do so. If you don't get that from your father, you have to teach yourself.

I was not going to nod. Everything that had ever happened to me in my whole life was mixed into the cement that kept my head perfectly still

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told.O I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave.

As if the answer to that question held the key to my success or failure at this—the hardest thing I'd ever done. I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.

If your Nerve, deny you – Go above your Nerve – EMILY DICKINSON

La paura genera paura. La forza genera forza.

I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.