Quotes about Struggle

Sometimes it seems to me that I shall never write out all the books I have in my head, because of the strain. The devilish thing about writing is that it calls upon every nerve to hold itself taut. This is exactly what I cannot do--

He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with gulls screaming over him. He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea. Or he was hearing music… But "Lovely!" he used to cry and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. And he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames!

We saw for a moment laid out among us the body of the complete human being whom we have failed to be, but at the same time, cannot forget.

Fight ! Fight! I repeated. It is the effort and the struggle, it is the perpetual warfare, it is the shattering and piecing together. This is the daily battle, defeat or victory, the absorbing pursuit.

To be flung into the sea, to be washed hither and thither, and driven about the roots of the world—the idea was incoherently delightful. She sprang up, and began moving about the room, bending and thrusting aside the chairs and tables as if she were indeed striking through the waters. He watched her with pleasure; she seemed to be cleaving a passage for herself, and dealing triumphantly with the obstacles which would hinder their passage through life.

Virtually all the characters in the novel have failed to live up to their early dreams and ambitions.

She must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.

I know what loves trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted, I have been torn apart.

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad!

How could any Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor.

Nothing happens here except that I write and write, and curse and burn.