Trying Times Quotes

1. "Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."
Author: Alysha Speer

2. "The dog leash was still tied tight around the oak tree in the back, stretched worn and limp across the green grass as if trying to escape to freedom; and he buried his wife without a tombstone. Where before, she sat most times in his home, licking her wounds."
Author: Anthony Liccione

3. "Sarah wonders if whatever secrets Grace is protecting feel the same as her own, sometimes just fuzzy and ticklish, like a littler of kittens trying to climb and paw their way out, and sometimes with claws bared, kittens grown to tigers, camouflaged but always ready to spring."
Author: Beth Neff

4. "We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is the present usually hurts."
Author: Blaise Pascal

5. "I keep feeling that people are becoming less human and more animalistic. They seem to think less and feel less so that everyone is operating on a very primitive level. I wonder what you and I will see in our lifetimes. It seems so hopeless yet we must keep on trying ... I guess we can't escape being a product of the times, can we?"
Author: Bret Easton Ellis

6. "I really only respect the Arab culture. I ain't really trying to pay no attention to, ya know, these little people in political positions and executive positions that ain't Arab culture oriented people because a lot of the times, what are you really showing all of this concern for?"
Author: Busta Rhymes

7. "Most of us... are simply just trying to get through the day. And wait for those times in their life that are markers, that put things into relief. That's why we like movies and books so much."
Author: Campbell Scott

8. "What of the hundreds of faceless men on the streets looking for work, trying to pick up the threads of family life, hoping that the dying had made a better Britain, and finding they were lost in it. Faceless men…People stepped around them now, ignored the brave boy who'd marched away to glory and now begged on the street because a one-armed man couldn't work. He thought sometimes, in the dark corners of his mind, that the dead were the lucky ones. They hadn't been disillusioned."
Author: Charles Todd

9. "A long time ago, before I even met you, someone replaced my chest with a broken record. For years, it's been stammering through the same old tune.I want you to know I'm trying. I quit smoking. I'm doing yoga. And those days I wake up wishing for death are getting fewer and farther apart.No, I'm not ok. But I haven't been ok since I was 11, maybe 12. I am still here though. I'm still breathing. For me, sometimes, that will have to be enough"
Author: Clementine Von Radics

10. "I didnt like being reminded about how self-absorbed i was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didnt want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasnt trying to weasel out of anything. I just wasnt in the mood of being on the earth that night. I get like that sometimes when it rains, or when i see certain sad movies."
Author: Donald Miller

11. "We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said."
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

12. "I had something I was trying to say and sometimes the message is an easy transmission and sometimes it's a difficult one but I love the power of saying it so I'm gonna do it whether it's hard or easy."
Author: Faith Ringgold

13. "Y-naga: "That's the thing... It's like trying to find a guy who's a kid at heart but still a responsible adult, so he can be counted on when I find myself in a pinch, somebody who's a little wild at times but normally lets me have my way even when I'm being selfish and just says, "well, if you insist," a guy who's not too full of himself but understands what clothes suit his body type best..."S-hara: "What I'm saying is the pretty ones are stupid! The ones who have it all together are all so, so stubborn that they never do things my way!"
Author: Fumi Yoshinaga

14. "Because I understand all the ways of trying to escape, how sometimes you escape one prison only to find you've built yourself a different one."
Author: Gayle Forman

15. "…I go through a story for lies. I might discover the lie of trying to show off. Sometimes they're lies of character. Sometimes they are lies of writing the most beautiful sentence in the world that has nothing to do with the story."
Author: Grace Paley

16. "My eyes in the mirror are cold as a lizard's, my expression fixed and unreadable. I can't remember the last time I laughed or even showed a hint of a smile to other people. Even to myself.I'm not trying to imply I can keep up this silent, isolated facade all the time. Sometimes the wall I've erected around me comes crumbling down. It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes, before I even realize what's going on, there I am-- naked and defenseless and totally confused. At times like that I always feel an omen calling out to me, like a dark, omnipresent pool of water."
Author: Haruki Murakami

17. "Shepley jogged around the front of the Charger, and then slid into the driver's seat. "I'm still taking the official position that this is a bad idea.""Noted.""Then where?""Steiner's.""The jewelry store?""Yep.""Why, Travis?" Shepley said, his voice more stern than before."You'll see."He shook his head. "Are you trying to run her off?""It's going to happen, Shep. I just want to have it. For when the time is right.""No time any time soon is right. I am so in love with America that it drives me crazy sometimes, but we're not old enough for that shit, yet, Travis. And … what if she says no?"My teeth clenched at the thought. "I won't ask her until I know she's ready."Shepley's mouth pulled to the side. "Just when I think you can't get any more insane, you do something else to remind me that you are far beyond bat shit crazy.""Wait until you see the rock I'm getting."Shepley craned his neck slowly in my direction. "You've already been over there shopping, haven't you?"I smiled."
Author: Jamie McGuire

18. "You didn't like him, did you, Dad?""It wasn't that I didn't like him," my dad says slowly. "It was just that he lives in a completely different world, and I worried that he didn't really approve of you the way you are, that he was trying to change you into something else."God, I never realized my dad was that perceptive.."You see, the thing is," he says after we've both sat for a while in the sunshine, "the thing is that love is really the most important thing. I know it's hard for you to see it now" - he chuckles quietly- "but when I first laid eyes on your mother I thought she was fantastic, and I've never stopped loving her, not for a second. Oh yes, we've had our rough patches, and she can be a bit of an old battle-ax at times, but I still love her. That in-love feeling at the beginning settles down into a different, familiar sort of love, but it has to be there right from the start, otherwise it just won't work."
Author: Jane Green

19. "To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need."
Author: Joan D. Vinge

20. "When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim."
Author: Jodi Picoult

21. "The results would have stayed on the watch face until the batteries died. But trying to make time stand still this way would have been a mistake. It is just as important to erase times eventually as to save them at first."
Author: Joe Henderson

22. "(For awhile there I was trying to remember the chain of events that precisely landed me doing this activity in this place on this planet at this time but couldn't…. That was scary. I am just *existing* at times, having dropped all extraneous ruminations as to how or why. It seems natural to be on the bus smiling as the two Hindu women chat away while we share butter crackers and look at the rice paddies in the valley below. Goats scatter as the bus slams to a creep. Doesn't everyone do this?)from wordpress blog:http://joeniemczura.wordpress.com/201..."
Author: Joe Niemczura

23. "The problem in today's economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman's intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee."
Author: John Medina

24. "I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I believe that clothes should make a woman feel beautiful. But sometimes it's the little things like cut and fit and sex appeal that make a large impact."
Author: Joseph Altuzarra

25. "I'm just trying to spare you hurt. Her love for Konrad is like the foundation of the earth." "The earth sometimes shifts."
Author: Kenneth Oppel

26. "Well, make up your mind. I don't have all night." Fidelia set her beer on the porch and removed a set of keys from her skirt pocket. She fumbled with the key, trying to release the trigger lock on her pistol."Don't do that," Heather warned her. "You've had too much to drink."Fidelia snorted. "I'm not drunk. I'm in complete control." She tore off the trigger lock.Bang! The gun fired, ripping into a nearby oak tree.The women screamed. Jean-Luc winced.A squirrel plummeted from the tree and landed in the yard with a thud.Fidelia shrugged. "I meant to do that. Damned rodent's been gnawing on the house. And stealing all the nuts from our pecan tree."Heather planted her hands on her hips. "Haven't I told you a million times to keep the locks on?"Fidelia hung her head, looking properly remorseful. "I'll be more careful." She switched on the safety, then shot Jean-Luc a pointed look. "I know how to deal with a scumbag with nuts."
Author: Kerrelyn Sparks

27. "Maybe it is desperation," I say. "Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love."He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. "Sometimes we can," he says."
Author: Lauren DeStefano

28. "Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!"
Author: Lewis Carroll

29. "No matter what we're trying to accomplish in life, or what career path we're trying to take, sometimes we get caught up and lose perspective on what's important in life."
Author: Lucas Black

30. "Many of us have spent a lifetime trying to be what we're not, feeling lousy about ourselves when we fail, and sometimes when we succeed. We hide our differences when, by accepting and celebrating them, we could collaborate to make every effort more exciting, productive enjoyable, and powerful. Personally, I think we should start right now."
Author: Martha Beck

31. "That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square."
Author: Michel Gondry

32. "That's what you were trying to say, isn't it? I mean, I think … mostly we're too busy living to stop and notice we're alive. But that sometimes we do. And that that makes the rest of it matter."
Author: Neil Gaiman

33. "There's a thing that happens in Hollywood, when you hand in a script with magic in it, and the people at the studio who read it say "We don't quite understand... can you explain the rules? What are the rules here? The magic must have rules" and sometimes when they say that to me I explain that I am sure it does, just as life has rules, but they didn't give me a rule book to life when I was born, and I've been trying to figure it out as I go along, and I am sure it is the same thing for magic; and sometimes I explain that, yes, the magic has rules, and if they read again carefully they can figure out what they are; and sometimes I sigh and put in a line here and a line there that spells things out, says, YES THESE ARE THE RULES YOU DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION and then everyone is very happy."
Author: Neil Gaiman

34. "HOW ANGELS SLEEP. Unsoundly. They toss and turn, trying to understand the mystery of the living. They know so little about what it's like to fill a new prescription for glasses and suddenly see the world again, with a mixture of disappointment and gratitude ... Also, they don't dream. For this reason, they have one less thing to talk about. In a backward way, when they wake up they feel as if there is something they are forgetting to tell each other. There is disagreement among the angels as to whether this is a result of something vestigial, or whether it is the result of the empathy they feel for the Living, so powerful it sometimes makes them weep. In general, they fall into these two camps on the subject of dreams. Even among the angels, there is the sadness of division."
Author: Nicole Krauss

35. "That sounds great," Marcus said, trying to marshal enthusiasm, leading with the expression of a desired sentiment and hoping that the sensation might obediently follow. It was a strategy that he had used for most of his life, and it had failed him innumerable times. He didn't know what it was that tied him to it, what held him fast to this magical idea—even now, after all the pain it had caused recently—that a feeling could be pre- arranged, ordered in advance and then calmly anticipated. One day, surely, it would arrive, like a phone call from a long-absent lover, confiding I miss you, where are you, come home, please, come home."
Author: Panio Gianopoulos

36. "I certainly have opportunities many can only dream of - but in most ways I'm a typical girl in her 20s trying to forge a career and represent herself in what can sometimes seem rather strange circumstances. One of the most attractive has been the chance to publish 'Celebrate.'"
Author: Pippa Middleton

37. "Well everybody's got a story to tell And everybody's got a wound to be healed I want to believe there's beauty here So, I guess you're tired of holding on I can't let go, I can't move on I want to believe there's meaning here How many times have you heard me cry out "God please take this"? How many times have you given me strength to Just keep breathing? Oh I need you God, I need you now. Standing on a road I didn't plan Wondering how I got to where I am I'm trying to hear that still small voice I'm trying to hear above the noise Though I walk, though I walk through the shadows And I, I am so afraid Please stay, please stay right beside me With every single step I take How many times have you heard me cry out? And how many times have you given me strength? I need you now I need you now"
Author: Plumb

38. "You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don't even know what songs would please you. I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment. All the immense images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and un-suspected turns in the path, and those powerful lands that were once pulsing with the life of the gods-- all rise within me to mean you, who forever elude me. You, Beloved, who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing. An open window in a country house-- , and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,-- you had just walked down them and vanished. And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening..."
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

39. "What-what do you want?" Annabeth asked, trying to maintain a tone of confidence.The voice cackled maliciously.'To curse you, of course! To destroy you thousand times in the name of Mother Night!'"Only a thousand times?" Percy murmured. "Oh, good...I thought we were in trouble."
Author: Rick Riordan

40. "Trying to live in the past didn't work for me, and it's only now that I fully realize I'm incredibly lucky it didn't. Because it would have been all too sad to miss out on right now. That would have turned the past into a fraud. It would have meant all my happy memories were a lie. It would have meant all that time and all that love was a waste, leading up to a wasted future. It would have been the ultimate betrayal of everything I thought my whole life was about and everyone I cared about. All the people who loved me, in all the times and places of my life—all the people who made a lover out of me—they would have all been wrong about me. And it could have happened easily, just like that. It's scary to think of how I could have gotten stuck pining for the past. I was lucky to get a second chance. I thought I was too late, but it turns out I was just in time."
Author: Rob Sheffield

41. "I'm just trying to make up for lost times, and I have total awareness that when the work is coming it doesn't mean it's going to continue to come, so I'm taking advantage of this phenomenal period that I'm in now, to its fullest."
Author: Ron Perlman

42. "The press is dying to paint me as now trying to undo the New Deal. I remind them I voted for F.D.R. 4 times. I'm trying to undo the "Great Society." It was L.B.J.'s war on poverty that led to our present mess."
Author: Ronald Reagan

43. "You know, in everyone's life you go through just trying to learn what one times one is—one times one equals one."
Author: S.B. Redd

44. "It's such a stress always trying to get bigger houses and larger cars and better schools. Of course, parents want to give their children the best opportunities in life, but sometimes that can stifle them."
Author: Shirley Henderson

45. "I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'"
Author: Sue Townsend

46. "Now I was also trying to understand how someone could end such intense desire without leaving a trace. If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger? A couple of houseplants? A dinky Home Depot Phalaenopsis in a coffee can? I personally have always found giving up on something a thousand times harder than getting it started, but evidently Laroche's finishes were downright and absolute, and what's more, he also shut off any chance of amends."
Author: Susan Orlean

47. "And could you, from a place of love, actually stand up and, use force, to give someone back, the suffering, they were trying to put on you? Would I do it? Maybe it would even be, an act of fierce compassion, as Enso Roshi sometimes talked about, to not take it any more. To not cow down, anymore. To let my father know, the tyrant, the aggressor, that if he hits me, I'm going to hit back, and hard."
Author: T. Scott McLeod

48. "If Nicholas Benedict truly had been able to see the future, his own would have startled him to sleep at once, for he would have seen that he was destined to do things far greater than he ever could have imagined – that wonderful and amazing people would one day be drawn to him like metal to a magnet; that together with Nicholas they would form a most unusual kind of family; and that together, during one of the world's darkest, most dangerous hours, they would change the course of history… For now he was simply a little boy on a cot, trying to fight off sleep as he had done countless times before…"
Author: Trenton Lee Stewart

49. "We're human. We all occasionally wet ourselves. No one is really better than anyone else. We're just all trying to make it through the year as best we can. We screw up sometimes. We succeed sometimes. We laugh. We cry. We go on. Those are the things we should really share with each other this holiday season, right, if we dare send a letter? We should share the truth. We should share the insanity."
Author: Wade Rouse

50. "What should one do? If Ruth had any better luck with him I would have thought that he simply had to attach himself to antifatherly gods until he proved himself a man in his own terms...She followed him to the bottom of his burrow, trying to understand, she forgave him incessantly, she was the pacifying force when he and I clashed. And he went out of his way to treat her with even greater impatience and contempt than he treated me. His wretched treatment of his mother was one of the commonest sources of our quarrels. Sometimes I wondered if he didn't abuse her because she tended to take his side - he wanted no mediator between us."
Author: Wallace Stegner

Trying Times Quotes Pictures