Desperation Day Quotes & Sayings

In her desperation she consulted Penny Thornton, an astrologer introduced to her by Sarah Ferguson. Diana admitted to Penny that she couldn't bear the pressure of her position any longer and that she had to leave the system. "One day you will be allowed out but you will be allowed out as opposed to divorcing," Penny told her, confirming Diana's existing opinion that she would never become queen. — Andrew Morton

In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams. — Toni Morrison

The image of life forces diluted and diseased by contact with the intruders revealed a telling insecurity. How confident were these men in the power of their idealized country or in themselves as its protectors? Where was the tradition of resilience and absorbing strength that their florid rhetoric celebrated at other times? In the very metaphor of infection, the nativists uncovered their fears that "America" was but a fragile essence. Like latter-day "defenders" who saw other alien dangers in communism, they attributed enormous influence to the enemy. Their angry words betrayed the desperation of those who half fear the battle is already lost. — David H. Bennett

For instance, with "Ragtime" I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall. That's the kind of day we sometimes have, as writers. Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Braodviw Avenue looked like then: trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was president. One thing led to another and that's the way that book began: through desperation to those few images ... - 92nd Street YMHA Interview — E.L. Doctorow

I fear that one day I will no longer understand desperation, and with that, I will slowly stop listening to what others have to say. — Courtney Milan

Midnight has fallen on the darkened streets of Haught and Battens Hill, and the watchman saith, All is well. We have prospered by the day, set our lock and bolt, and tried the windows, and all is well. Want, murder, desperation, and despair still roam in the filthy alleys and tenements of The Steps and breed countless wrongs in their path, yet the watchman passing cries, All is well. The watchman clears away the hungry children who hunt for scraps behind the New Theatre while a nobleman's carriage rolls by, but decent folk turn, sighing in their sleep, and faintly hear the report: all is well. The prison gates are shut, and what is within is surely confined there, and touches us not; therefore, all is well. — Andrei Baltakmens

One day Adam will realize that what he felt for me was just a crazy kind of desperation. We were two people who really needed someone to hold on to, and we had this past that made us seem so compatible. But it wasn't enough. Because if it were, I wouldn't have been able to walk away so easily. — Tahereh Mafi

I know I shouldn't be doing this. I know I'm poking a wound, not healing it. I know there's no way to have a future with Rhiannon.
All I'm doing is extending the past by a day. — David Levithan

Yet for all the depression no one ever quit. When someone quit, we couldn't believe it. 'I'm becoming a rafting instructor on the Colorado River,' they said. 'I'm touring college towns with my garage band.' We were dumbfounded. It was like they were from another planet. Where had they found the derring-do? What would they do about car payments? We got together for going away drinks on their final day and tried to hide our envy while reminding ourselves that we still had the freedom and luxury to shop indiscriminately. — Joshua Ferris

He sobbed in desperation at the burden of fear he carried with him every day of his life. — J.K. Rowling

The world as an arena contains different tomorrows. When you see a different today, you shall think of a different yesterday and there shall come yet another and a different tomorrow! Day by day, night by night, we meet another tomorrow with different perspectives. If the good tomorrow you thought of becomes a bad today, don't worry at all and pray, another tomorrow is coming for today to be yesterday! Don't ever let desperation take the seat of inspiration within you! Keep Smiling, no matter what; for though all things go wrong, something is right somewhere! Just ponder, smile, be happy, shake of the dust and arise for another tomorrow is coming! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

These young ones. They do not understand. There are so few of us left who remember how destructive rebellion is. The slaughter after the Golden Calf was worshiped. The thousands who died. The firestorm that burned the outer rim of camp when the foreigners among us incited a riot. They take for granted the miraculous water that feeds this multitude. They have eaten the manna every day of their lives and do not see the utter strangeness of it. They have not felt the desperation of thirst or the hopelessness of hunger. All they do is complain, — Connilyn Cossette

You told me, if something is not used it is meaningless, and took my temperature, which I had thought to save for a more difficult day. In the mirror, every night, the same face, a bit more threadbare, a dress worn too long. The moon was out in the cold, along with the restless, dissatisfied wind that seemed to change the location of the sycamores. I expected reproaches because I had mentioned the word love, but you only accused me of stealing your pencil, and sadness disappeared with sense. You made a ceremony out of holding your head in your hands because, you said, it could not be contained in itself. — Rosmarie Waldrop

She said that one day they would be very old, that the world would be a different place, but it would always be their world, and that the time apart now would be a nightmare from which they would recover - desperation buried under years of happiness. — Simon Van Booy

I think it's in Malone Dies that Beckett's creature is in a kind of prison or hospital. As I recall, he is visited twice a day, slop brought in and slop taken out. He has a stub of a pencil, a bit of paper. And he asks questions, ten, sven, I don't remember, "Why am I here?" "What day is it?" The last one, no. 10 maybe, says "Number your answers." This is not just desperation and clinging to something called 'reason'--by his fingertips--that is humanity, shit-smeared, hopeless, and mad humanity--in the face of all denial. Our work is about that. My work. — Gerald Stern

Sharpe had no thought of deserting now, for now he was about to fight. If there was any one good reason to join the army, it was to fight. Not to hurry up and do nothing, but to fight the King's enemies, and this enemy had been shocked by the awful violence of the close-range volley and now they stared in horror as the redcoats screamed and ran towards them. The 33rd, released from the tight discipline of the ranks, charged eagerly. There was loot ahead. Loot and food and stunned men to slaughter and there were few men in the 33rd who did not like a good fight. Not many had joined the ranks out of patriotism; instead, like Sharpe, they had taken the King's shilling because hunger or desperation had forced them into uniform, but they were still good soldiers. They came from the gutters of Britain where a man survived by savagery rather than by cleverness. They were brawlers and bastards, alley-fighters with nothing to lose but tuppence a day. — Bernard Cornwell

I walked to Mairangi Bay beach, day after day, seeking companionship in the roar of the ocean, and contemplating the shipwreck of my life. There, in that isolated wilderness, amidst the screaming gulls, and consistent rhythm of the tides, I channeled my chaotic thoughts through my pen and released them into poetry, until the quiet desperation passed and I was secure in the knowledge that I had made it through another day. — B.G. Bowers

Death, my son, is a good thing for all men; it is the night for this worried day that we call life. It is in the sleep of death that finds rest for eternity the sickness, pain, desperation, and the fears that agitate, without end, we unhappy living souls. — Jacques-Henri Bernardin De Saint-Pierre

Whenever it shows itself - hope, that is - hands from the crowded streets reach for it with such violent urgency because of the fear that they may never see it again. They do so without knowing that their desperation frightens hope away. Hope also doesn't know that it is its scarcity. that causes the crowd to lunge at it, shredding its robe. And as it struggles to escape, the fabric scraps land in the hands of some but last only for hours, a day, days, a week, weeks, depending on how much fabric each hand is able to catch. — Ishmael Beah

I didn't want her turned, against both her will and nature, into those diligent, sad women who are bent on a lifelong course of quiet servitude, forever in fear of showing, saying, or doing the wrong thing. Women who are admired by some in the West- here in France, for instance- turned into heroines for their hard lives, admired from a distance by those who couldn't bear even one day of walking in their shoes. Women who see their desires doused and their dreams renounced, and yet- and this is the worst of it- if you meet them, they smile and pretend they have no misgivings at all. As though they lead enviable lives. But you look closely and you see the helpless looks, the desperation, and how it belies all their show of good humor. I did not want this for my daughter. — Khaled Hosseini

Deadworld? Is that where you're from?" "No, dude. That's where you're from. It's where we are now. This place, it's a horror show. If the guy next to you decides to knock you out of this world forever, he can do it with just a piece of metal or, hell, even his bare hand. You blobs, you sit there, chillin' in this room and I can smell the rot of dead animals soaking in the acid of your guts. You suck the life from the innocent creatures of this world just so you can clock another day. You're machines that run on the terror and pain and mutilation of other lives. You'll scrape the world clean of every green and living thing until starvation goes one-eight-seven on every one of your sorry asses, your desperation to put off death leadin' to the ultimate death of everybody and everything. Dude, I can't believe you ain't all paralyzed by the pure, naked horror of this place. — David Wong

[I am] A fool who believes that death is waste and love is sweet and that the earth turns and men change every day and that rivers run and that people wanna be better than they are and that flowers smell good and that I hurt terribly today, and that hurt is desperation and desperation is - energy and energy can move things... — Lorraine Hansberry

There is point in your life when you come face to face with the reality that you cannot take another step on your own. For me, I had never experienced that point, but depression brought me there. I have slowly, painfully and continually been confronted by my brokenness. Coming to terms with the fact that I am broken has been at the center of my accepting my being loved.
For me, now, there exists a sense of desperate need for what God brings to my spiritual and mental self. Without His voice I cannot cope with the darkness, but with His whisper of "you are My beloved", I can take a step each day away from the chasm. I am broken but not beyond mending, not beyond love.
It has been this desperation that has opened a crevice in which I am seeing Him for the first time. He is why my soul can find some peace even when my mind is dark and numb. It is this love that continually has brought me back from the edge of the impostor to the honesty of my broken, inner self — David Hulon Hood

Adventure and danger can be good for your heart and soul. Violence and desperation are brutal things to search out. Why search out the horror? It's around us in real ways every day. I'm talking to you, the people who make that movie "The Human Centipede". No more "Human Centipede" movies please. No more movies about people's mouths being sewn onto other people's butts. The whole idea of making and watching a movie like that makes me want to take a ten-year nap. — Amy Poehler

For almost every addict who s mired in this terrible disease, other -- a mother or father, a child or spouse, an aunt or uncles or grandparents, a brother or sister -- are suffering too. Families are the hidden victims of addiction, enduring enormous levels of stress and pain. They suffer sleepless nights, deep anxiety, and physical exhaustion brought on by worry and desperation. They lie awake for hours on end as fear for their loved one's safety crowds out any possibility of sleep. They liveeach day with a weight inside that drags them down. Unable to laugh or smile, they are sometimes filled with bottled-up anger or a constant sadness that keeps them on the verge of tears. — Beverly Conyers

Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow
haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to
I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline
they aren't remade. — Wallace Stegner

We're not going to make it, I said.
The words caught in my throat, choking me. What was it Leslie had said to me when we were discussing Shannon's and Antoinetta's disappearance? 'You're beginning to sound like one of the characters in your books, Adam.' She'd been right. If this were a novel my heroes would have arrived just in the nick of time and saved the day. But real life didn't work like that. Real life had no happy endings. Despite our best efforts, despite my love for Tara [his wife] and my determination to protect her, and after everything we'd been through at the LeHorn house, fate conspired against us. We were still nine or ten miles from home, and night was almost upon us. By the time we got there it would already be too late. I fought back tears. I had the urge just to lie down in the middle of the road and let the next car run over me. — Brian Keene

He felt the decision like a seed crystal giving form to the chaos around it, solid, hard, resolute. Desperation, mourning, and a million farewells, one to the other. The word quarantine came to him, and with the logic of dreams, it carried an unsupportable weight of horror. But within it, like the last voice in Pandora's box, the promise of reunion. One day, when the solution was found, everything that had been lost would be regained. The gates reopened. The vast mind restored. — James S.A. Corey

SONG OF DAWN
I saw the sun rise by accident.
It was a horrible sight.
Annoyed by its splendor, I sought refuge
in a moist pillow, and lay there, alone,
at the dawn of another day,
that brought me closer to another death,
pondering the vanity of my solitude,
the vanity of procrastination,
and the tiresome inevitability of waking up
again the same person.
It might still be possible to change,
but obstinately I remain the same,
hoping that others might take solace
in my consistency.
But perhaps they take no solace in it,
perhaps they too find it tedious. — John Tottenham

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this
dog days
that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. — Tove Jansson

At 6:15 she was standing on her front porch watering gardenias and watching another line of thunderstorms split and go around her. The same thing happened almost every day. Some days they came so close all she could smell was the rain. The wind whipped up dust from the fields until it drove like buckshot into the shuddering mesquites, and Clara Nell started to pray. 'Jesus,' she whispered. 'Jesus, Jesus....' But the only thing that came out of the sky was her topsoil. Every day the wind took a little more, and it hadn't rained in almost a year. — Andrew Geyer

The name itself is trouble. "Slough" means, literally, muddy field. A snake sloughs, or sheds, its dead skin. John Bunyan wrote of the "slough of despond" in Pilgrim's Progress. In the 1930s, John Betjeman wrote this poem about Slough: Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow, Swarm over, Death! Then he got nasty. To this day, the residents of Slough rankle when anyone mentions the poem. The town's reputation as a showpiece of quiet desperation was cemented when the producers of the TV series The Office decided to set the show in Slough. — Eric Weiner