Quotes about Struggle

I have waited toes curled, hat rolled heart and genitals in hand on the back porches of forever in the kitchens and fields of rejections on the cold marble steps of America's White Out-House in the drop seats of buses and the open flies of war

He badder than death yet gives no sweet release.

In a Time In a time of secret wooing Today prepares tomorrow's ruin Left knows not what right is doing My heart is torn asunder. In a time of furtive sighs Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes Half-truths told and entire lies My conscience echoes thunder. In a time when kingdoms come Joy is brief as summer's fun Happiness, its race has run Then pain stalks in to plunder.

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave

She worked the thread through the flowered cloth as if she were sewing the torn ends of her life together.

In that second I was wounded. My mind struck a truth as an elbow can strike a table edge. A poor, uneducated servant in Africa was so secure he could ignore established White rudeness. No Black American I had ever known knew that security. Our tenure in the United States, though long and very hard-earned, was always so shaky, we had developed patience as a defense, but never as aggression.

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve to peer into my eyes while I within deny their threats and answer them with lies

Midwives and winding sheets know birthing is hard and dying is mean and living's a trial in between. Why do we journey, muttering like rumors among the stars? Is a dimension lost? Is it love?

I think that everyone thought that the Depression like everything else, was for the white-folks, so it had nothing to do with them.

Even recovery brings losses, more changes we must struggle to accept.

Struggling is okay. Back-stepping is okay. Small bits of progress are not only okay, they're admirable.

but the power of being emotionally stuck is far greater than the power of reason."2