Quotes about Resilience

Before and since, all her effort was directed not on avoiding pain but on getting through it as quickly as possible.

Didn't everything on God's earth have or acquire defense?

God take what He would, she said. And He did, and He did, and He did.

And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This

For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.

The one set of plans she had made—getting away from Sweet Home—went awry so completely she never dared life by making more.

Their children were like distant but exposed wounds whose aches were no less intimate because separate from their flesh. They had looked at the world and back at their children, back at the world and back again at their children, and Sula knew that one clear young eye was all that kept the knife away from the throat's curve.

The best thing was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.

When he was drifting, thinking only about the next meal and night's sleep, when everything was packed tight in his chest, he had no sense of failure, of things not working out. Anything that worked at all worked out.

THERE IS a loneliness that can be rocked.

They had become an occasional mutter, like the interior sounds a woman makes when she believes she is alone and unobserved at her work: a sth when she misses the needle's eye; a soft moan when she sees another chip in her one good platter; the low friendly argument with which she greets the hens.

If ever there came a morning when mercy and simple good fortune took to their heels and fled, grace alone might have to do.