Quotes About Strength

Who is tougher than me? No one.

When I had no roof I made Audacity my roof. ROBERT PINSKY, "Samurai Song

I'd loved books in my regular, pre-PCT life, but on the trail, they'd taken on even greater meaning. They were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear. When

I)t was Lady who saved my mother's life. Lady, who made it possible for her not only to walk away from my father, but also to keep going. Horses were my mother's religion. It was them she wanted to be with all those Sundays as a child, when she'd been made to put on dresses to go to mass.

Perhaps by now I'd come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid. When

She'd come at us with maximum maternal velocity. She hadn't held back a thing, not a single lick of her love.

This isn't about strength," said Pat. "And you may not be able to see this yet, but perhaps there will come a time—it could be years from now—when you'll need to get on your horse and ride into battle and you're going to hesitate. You're going to falter. To heal the wound your father made, you're going to have to get on that horse and ride into battle like a warrior.

I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long silk veil. I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.

I'm not afraid, I said, calling up my old mantra to calm my mind. But it didn't feel the same as it usually did to say it. Perhaps because that wasn't entirely true anymore. Perhaps by now I'd come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid.

when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth it was true, I said it anyway: No one.

I can't do this," he kept repeating through his tears. "I can't live without Mom. I can't. I can't. I can't." "We have to," I replied, though I couldn't believe it myself.

There are so many things to be tortured about, sweet pea. So many torturous things in this life. Don't let a man who doesn't love you be one of them.

My feet? Well, they were still entirely, unspeakably fucked.

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." O

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 better than I'd ever felt in all of my life, now that the trail had taught me how horrible I could feel.

was who I was: the same woman who pulsed beneath the bruise of her old life, only now I was somewhere else.

There was nothing to do but go on.

I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth it was true, I said it anyway: No one.

I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked.

The trees were tall, but I was taller

I had no roof I made Audacity my roof. ROBERT PINSKY, "Samurai Song

The staying and doing it, in spite of everything. In spite of the bears and the rattlesnakes and the scat of the mountain lions I never saw; the blisters and scabs and scrapes and lacerations. The exhaustion and the deprivation; the cold and the heat; the monotony and the pain; the thirst and the hunger; the glory and the ghosts that haunted me as I hiked eleven hundred miles from the Mojave Desert to the state of Washington by myself.

the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard.