Quotes & Sayings About Getting Through The Day

I'm on it pretty much all the time. I edit Wikipedia every day, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm reading the news. During one of the US elections, I actually went through my computer and I blocked myself from looking at the major newspaper sites and Google News because I wasn't getting any work done. — Jimmy Wales

At a normal high school, having class outside on a gorgeous May day is usually pretty awesome. It means sitting in the sunshine, maybe reading some poetry, letting the breeze blow through your hair ... At Hecate Hall, a.k.a. Juvie for Monsters, it meant I was getting thrown in the pond. — Rachel Hawkins

Every day Big Government heaps demands and restrictions upon businesses that sink some enterprises, cause others to direct resources away from serving customers and instead toward jumping through hoops of lawyers and regulators, and prevent other operations from ever getting off the ground. — Joel Miller

Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go.
Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day.
maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying.
Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for. — Ann Brashares

I was 17 when my body started changing, and I worried about what I did wrong. I went through a period where I didn't eat at all. I also had someone who was encouraging me to take diet pills. I pushed myself to the extreme because I woke up one day and had hips - and a butt - and thought, 'Oh my gosh, I'm getting fat!' — Shantel VanSanten

There's the usual suspects in there, Green Day and The Clash and The Smiths, yeah, but there's also Ella and Frank, even Dino, some Curtis Mayfield and Minor Threat and Dusty Springfield and Belle & Sebastian, and as I flip through his musical life, getting to know his tastes, I must acknowledge that not only am I not frigid, but I also may be multi-orgasmic. — Rachel Cohn

For me and my wife ... the easiest part of my life is my marriage. Like if everything was as smooth and easy and fun as my relationship with my wife then I would have a much easier time getting through the day. We really get along and we like the same stuff. — Seth Rogen

Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It's hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin. Maybe a day even comes when you are getting dressed for a fancy event and it whispers, "You aren't pretty," and you go, "I know, I know, now let me find my earrings." Sometimes you say, "Demon, I promise you I will let you remind me of my ugliness, but right now I am having hot sex so I will check in later. — Amy Poehler

One of the secrets of getting more done is to make a TO DO List every day, keep it visible, and use it as a guide to action as you go through the day. — Alan Lakein

The mistake we all make is in assuming anybody remembers anydamnthing from one day to the next. If that were true, we'd stop getting involved with approximately the same kind of wrong lover each time, we'd learn the lessons of history, the death penalty would discourage those plotting murder, and George Santayana's famous quote would be about as popular as "the bee's knees." But few of us keep accurate records of what we've learned as we hobble through life barking our shins in the dark on experiences we've already had ... — Harlan Ellison

I am born as the South explodes, too many people too many years enslaved, then emancipated but not free, the people who look like me keep fighting and marching and getting killed so that today - February 12, 1963 and every day from this moment on, brown children like me can grow up free. Can grow up learning and voting and walking and riding wherever we want. I am born in Ohio but the stories of South Carolina already run like rivers through my veins. — Jacqueline Woodson

There was nothing like an extra helping of guilt to cool a man's blood.And it was guilt as much as the hot food and the glass of good wine that got Brian through the evening in the Grant kitchen. The size of it left little room for lust, considering.
There was Adelia Grant giving him a warm greeting as if he was welcome to swing in for dinner anytime he had the whim, and Travis getting out an extra plate himself-as if he waited on employees five days a week-and saying that there was plenty to go around as Brendon had other plans for dinner.
Before he knew it, he was sitting down, having food heaped in front of him and being asked how his day had been.And not in a way that expected a report.
He didn't know what to do about it. He liked these people, genuinely liked them. And there he was lusting after their daughter. An alley mutt after a registered purebred. — Nora Roberts

Because happiness itself is a mythical construct, a dream you humans tell yourselves to get through each day. It is the moon, and you, like the sun, pursue it relentlessly, chasing it around and around, getting nowhere. — Jessica Khoury

When we got to the marina we saw this beautiful boat named Tara waiting for us. Fredo, Carin, Ryan, Dan, Kenny, Allison, my mom, and me were all together to enjoy that extraordinary day. As the boat pulled away from the city, its skyline vanished into the horizon. The captain took us to this area where we sailed through caves and lush hilly landscapes. All of a sudden, the captain pushed the throttle all the way down and we started bombing across the water like we were in a James Bond movie. Everyone's hair was blowing all over the place, especially the girls'. Of course, mine was perfect (ha,ha), but theirs ended up looking like the worst case of bed head I've seen! It was so funny. — Justin Bieber

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable. — Christopher Hitchens

Lucia couldn't deny it. Cleo was getting to her, breaking through that dark wall that surrounded her. Believe in magic. Believe in the impossible. Believe, tentatively, in this fragile new friendship with Cleo. And believe that one day she'd see Alexius again. — Morgan Rhodes

I exhale a highway of smoke and stare down it, then say, Each day has just been survival, just getting through, standing it.
Don't you see how savage that sounds? Like, that's the way men in prison yards think. You live in a rich suburb and teach literature. — Mary Karr

Friends and family came and went, sometimes helping her with her tears, other times making her laugh. But even in her laughter there was something missing. She never seemed to be truly happy; she just seemed to be passing time while she waited for something else. She was tired of just existing; she wanted to live. But what was the point in living when there was no life in it? These questions went through her mind over and over until she reached the point of not wanting to wake up from her dreams
they were what felt real.
Deep down, she knew it was normal to feel like this, she didn't particularly think she was losing her mind. She knew that one day she would be happy again and that this feeling would just be a distant memory. It was getting to that day that was the hard part. — Cecelia Ahern

It's incredible, really, the amount of pain cricketers are prepared to put themselves through. Say you're an opening batsman who gets out for a duck in the first over on day one. What compels you to hang around for the rest of the day, let alone turn up the following Saturday for day two? Yet you do, lest 10 blokes who you don't even like think slightly less of you. You retain a sense of loyalty to the club, to your teammates, even though those same teammates will not hesitate to rate your girlfriend a 'six out of 10' in front of your face. During the time I've spent watching my teammates bat after getting out cheaply, I could have learned a language by now. I could be speaking Mandarin. Instead, all I've got to show for it is a career average of 13.6 and a 10 percent discount at our local pub. — Sam Perry

Everybody who plays top-level sport, whether it's golf or football, or whatever, needs to get into 'The Zone' ... For me personally, on the morning of a round, preparation is always about getting into the zone. The less I communicate with other people, the better. I'm trying to rehearse in my mind what I am working on in my game: going through my swing keys, going through my putting keys. When I get to the course I get the pin positions for the day and I'll analyze those. I'll make a strategy for the golf course and look how I'm going to play it — Paul McGinley

With Pantera, we lived through so many trend-of-the-day situations - when grunge was huge, we were still a heavy metal band; when hip-hop started getting incorporated into metal, we stuck to our guns and remained a heavy metal band very purposefully. — Phil Anselmo

I think that the so-called average person often exhibits a great deal of heroism in getting through an ordinary day ... — Harvey Pekar

But it was the second guy who caught my eye. Like the girl, he, too, paused by the door, seeming even more wary than she looked. The sunlight streaming in through the windows highlighted the rich honey in his dark chocolate brown hair, even as it cast his face in shadow. The tan skin of his arms resembled marble - hard, but smooth and supple at the same time.
He must have passed through the mist spewed up by the fountain outside, because his black T-shirt was wet in places and the damp patches clung to his skin. The wetness allowed me to see just how muscled his chest was. Oh, yeah, I totally ogled that part of him, right up until I spotted the silver cuff on his right wrist.
Given the angle, I couldn't tell what crest was stamped into the metal, but I glanced at the others, who also wore cuffs. I sighed. So they belonged to some Family then. Wonderful. This day just kept getting better. — Jennifer Estep

Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and ... now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement.
It gets to be a habit. Most of us manage to keep our body count quite low. It's the neighborly way to live. — Orson Scott Card

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There's always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That's what dignifies the song. Songs don't dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song. — Leonard Cohen

When I was around 13 or 14, I started getting really into songwriting. And one day, I was rooting through my mum's old tapes and records, and I found 'Grace' by Jeff Buckley. I remember so vividly the first time I put it on. It blew my mind: his voice, the way he could play the guitar. I must have listened to the album over and over for weeks. — Tom Odell

People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through, and it really helps you out. At the end of the day, it gets you through because you have to reform your relationship, and you have to figure out a way of getting to the future. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The principles of gain through loss, of joy through sorrow, of getting by giving, of fulfillment by laying down, of life out of death is what the Bible teaches, and the people who have believed it enough to live it out in simple, humble, day-by-day practice are people who have found the gain, the joy, the getting, the fulfillment, the life. — Elisabeth Elliot

For the longest time all I cared about was getting through the day. When your every breath was an effort, that quickly became the extent of your expectations. — A Meredith Walters

That's the point of it, to have those connections, as painful as they are, as much worry as they might cause; they give back in strength and comfort and joy, believe it or not, and the more connections you make, the happier you are, the more point there is to getting up and getting through the day. — Gregory Galloway

I can't fathom the day when I'll be able to figure out how to independently maneuver my way into my bra, like I used to, every day since I was thirteen. The left arm through the left loop, the left boob into the left cup. Never mind the clasp in the back. My poor injured brain gets all twisted up like some circus contortionist even trying to imagine how this procedure would work. I'm supposed to at least try every step of getting dressed on my own, but when it comes to the bra, I no longer bother. My mother just does it for me, and we don't tell the therapists.She holds up one of my white Victoria's Secret Miracle Bras. I close my eyes, shutting out the humiliating image of my mother manhandling my boobs. But even with my eyes closed, I can feel her cold fingers against my bare skin, and as I can't help but picture what she's doing, humiliation saunters right in, takes a seat, and puts its feet up. Like it does every day now. — Lisa Genova

It says in Romans 5:17, "We are to reign in life as kings." When God looks at us He doesn't see us defeated, barely getting by, or just taking the leftover positions. Not at all. God sees you as a king. He sees you as a queen. You have His royal blood flowing through your veins. You and I are supposed to reign in life. Do you know what that word reign means? It means, "time in power." God said we're to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you're alive that is your time in power. You don't have a two-year term like a mayor, a four-year term like a president. Your term is to reign every single day, to be victorious, to rise to new levels, to accomplish great things. — Joel Osteen

It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, Well, that is California all over. — Mark Twain

Relationships, like all human experiences, are transient; they change every day and are meant to be enjoyed in the present. When I hear people say you need to "work" at a relationship, what that often really means is just seeing through the day-to-day; listening to another person, listening to yourself, not getting stuck on hurts from the past, and not getting lost in what might come. To be in a relationship with someone you respect, care about and value is a gift, and when you take that in the day-to-day, you honor yourself and your partner each day. Eating is no different in that you can honor yourself at each meal. So much time in relationships is spent hashing the past, and arguing about things that haven't yet happened. A relationship cannot be "hoarded", just like a meal cannot be prolonged by taking home the leftovers. — Ramani Durvasula

She rose from her bed full of new resolutions. 'We must get out and about more,' she told her startled mother. 'We must try different things. We are getting groovy.' She drew up a list of events and activities: concerts, day trips, public meetings. She went in a fit through her address book, writing letters to old friends. She borrowed novels from the library by authors who had never interested her before. She began to teach herself Esperanto, reciting phrases as she polished and swept. — Sarah Waters

I feel like I learn every day how I can be a better producer or writer or storyteller. The thing that keeps me the most balanced is just going home every day and getting my ass kicked by my kids, and having a wife who is the most wonderfully/brutally honest person I've ever met. I think that that is always the first lens through which I see the world. For everything else, I'm just grateful for the people I work with. — J.J. Abrams

because lying down and letting life walk over you was harder in the end. Getting through a bad day took less out of her than ignoring it until it built up into a crisis. — V.C. Lancaster

I would like to be able to say that I came back from this by just simply getting up from the sofa and rolling up my sleeves ... but I didn't. I could not even take things days by day. In realistic terms I fought to make it through the day - 5 minutes at a time. — Gisela Hausmann

He hadn't woken a day since my death when the day wasn't something to get through. But the truth was, the memorial service day was not the worst kind. At least it was honest. At least it was a day shaped around what they were so preoccupied by: my absence. Today he would not have to pretend he was getting back to normal - whatever normal was. — Alice Sebold

I live in a room and I go to work and I play a game called getting through the day while you wait for the night. — Lillian Hellman

There was once an abbot who had spent thirty-nine years alone in the temple with cats as his only companions. As someone who believed that faith and willpower could conquer any difficulty, the abbot began training newborn kittens, trying to turn the impossible into the possible. First he put the rattan hoop on the ground for the kittens to crawl through. Then he slowly raised the hoop little by little, day after day, month after month, and year after year. Years went by and the hoop was gradually raised until he finally succeeded in getting the cats to jump through the hoop. An unusual phenomenon occurred. When the kittens saw the older cats jump, they believed they could do it too and so, without much effort, they learned to jump easily through the hoop as well. — You Jin

And I've fallen.
So hard.
I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have I felt this. Nothing like this. I've felt shame and cowardice, weakness and strength. I've known terror and indifference, self-hate and general disgust. I've seen things that cannot be unseen.
And yet I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching.
Love is a heartless bastard. — Tahereh Mafi

Since the day he was born, he'd been defying the odds. Today was not the day to stop that trend. Unlike Ambrose, he wasn't about to give up or give in.
So long as there was breath in his body, there was life. So long as there was life, there was hope. And so long as there was hope, there was the possibility of victory.
Life wasn't about just getting by. It was about getting through, no matter what, and making the most of every minute.
A chill went down his spine as he remembered what his father had said to him.
Nick Gautier would not be remembered as a coward or a villain. He was going out a hero and a champion.
And he would not go down without a vicious, vicious fight. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Everyone watching over his shoulder, Free French plotting revenge on Vichy traitors, Lublin Communists drawing beads on Varsovian shadow-ministers, ELAS Greeks stalking royalists, unrepatriable dreamers of all languages hoping through will, fist, prayer to bring back kings, republics, pretenders, summer anarchisms that perished before the first crops were in ... some dying wretchedly, nameless, under ice-and-snow surfaces of bomb craters out in the East End not to be found till spring, some chronically drunk or opiated for getting through the day's reverses, most somehow losing, losing what souls they had, less and less able to trust, seized in the game's unending chatter, its daily self-criticism, its demand for total attention ... — Thomas Pynchon

You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day. — Viggo Mortensen

Habit is a good thing for the human race ... You have to spend so much energy just getting through the day when you have no habits that you don't have any left for productive labor. — Marilyn French

Jesus Christ. He was wearing a suit for once, a dark gray ensemble that looked tailored to fit his wide shoulders, full arms, slim hips, and muscular thighs. How the hell did he go through the day without getting slipped a Rohypnol by every woman he came in contact with? — Mariana Zapata

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. — Ellen Goodman

I also remember, having been fucked up every day for years, that the world seemed like such a novelty to me during my first few years sober. Like, I remember going through each of the seasons and the magic of rediscovering what it felt like to be in the world: going to a pumpkin patch on Halloween, getting a tree for Christmas, I felt excited by reality in a way that I never had before. I actually wanted to be alive. — Melissa Broder

[Asked, upon the death of her fast friend and sister suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816-1902), which period of their association she had enjoyed the most:] The days when the struggle was the hardest and the fight the thickest; when the whole world was against us and we had to stand the closer to each other; when I would go to her home and help with the children and the housekeeping through the day and then we would sit up far into the night preparing our ammunition and getting ready to move on the enemy. The years since the rewards began to come have brought no enjoyment like that. — Susan B. Anthony

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. — Stasi Eldredge

Anxiety, as neuropsychologists today tell us, is toxic; our brains are wired to avoid anxiety. Anxiety corrupts the chemistry of the brain and leads us to depart (emotionally or physically) from others to protect ourselves. Jesus's words to his disciples "to fear not" (Luke 8:50 NRSV) become of utmost significance. Anxiety is so acidic that it is nearly impossible to have relationship, to be a place-sharer, where the air is poisoned with it. Bonhoeffer's calm and composure, even on the first day, signaled to the boys that he had no anxiety, no worry about lessons being unfinished or others thinking he was a failure. His composure signaled to them that it might be that he is really just here for them, rather than to fulfill some goal that they could frustrate (like getting them through the material). Bonhoeffer's composure tacitly indicated to the boys that he was more loyal to their concrete persons than any end others sought for them. — Andrew Root

Do you remember that piece of footage on the local news, just as the first tower comes down, woman runs in off the street into a store, just gets the door closed behind her, and here comes this terrible black billowing, ash, debris, sweeping through the streets, gale force past the window ... that was the moment, Maxi. Not when 'everything changed.' When everything was revealed. No grand Zen illumination, but a rush of blackness and death. Showing us exactly what we've become, what we've been all the time."
"And what we've always been is ... ?"
"Is living on borrowed time. Getting away cheap. Never caring about who's paying for it, who's starving somewhere else all jammed together so we can have cheap food, a house, a yard in the burbs ... planetwide, more every day, the payback keeps gathering. And meantime the only help we get from the media is boo hoo the innocent dead. Boo fuckin hoo. You know what? All the dead are innocent. There's no uninnocent dead. — Thomas Pynchon

The chandelier was wearing on its rubber support and the crack at the side of the ceiling hold was getting bigger. "One day that's going to fall on us and spear you through the heart," he said. I turned to kiss him on the shoulder and closed my eyes. — Kate Chisman

The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight; but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing; the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to ice. — Charlotte Bronte

My father had always dreamed of getting a Ph.D., but certain life circumstances prevented him from following through. It was a tremendous, deep regret. The day I got my Ph.D., I saw in my father's face what it meant that I had done this. — Jhumpa Lahiri

If in large part we were concerned only with making it through another day without getting laid off, there was a smaller part just hoping to leave for the night without contributing to someone's lifetime of hurt. — Joshua Ferris

I was beginning to taste it. Something bitter, but warm.
A flavor that woke me up and let me see things clearly. A flavor that made me feel safe, so I could let those things go. A flavor that held my hand and walked me across to the other side of loss, and assured me that one day, I would be just fine. A flavor for a change of heart- part grief, part hope.
Suddenly, I knew what that flavor would be. I padded down to the kitchen and cut a slice of sour cream coffee cake with a spicy underground river coursing through its center, left over from an order that had not been picked up today.
One bite and I was sure. A familiar flavor that now seemed utterly fresh and custom-made for me.
Cinnamon.
The comfort of sweet cinnamon. It always worked. I felt better. Lighter. Not quite "everything is going to be all right," but getting there. One step at a time. — Judith Fertig

The other day at a drive-through, I reminded the teenage girl serving me that she forgot my drinks. She looked at me, hissed, rolled her eyes, and then took her sweet time getting me the sodas. — Neil Cavuto

Henry James once defined life as that predicament which precedes death, and certainly nobody owes you a debt of honor or gratitude for getting him into that predicament. But a child does owe his father a debt, if Dad, having gotten him into this peck of trouble, takes off his coat and buckles down to the job of showing his son how best to crash through it. — Clarence Budington Kelland

I know you're in a world of pain, but that pain will lessen. At the beginning you can't see that. You can only see your pain and you think it will never go away.
But the nature of pain is that it changes - it changes like a sunset. At first, it's this intense red-orange in the sky, and then it starts getting softer and soften. The texture of pain changes as you work through it. And then one day, you wake up and realize that life isn't just about working through your incest; it's about living, too.
- survivor of child sexual abuse — Ellen Bass

Thousands of sheep, cattle, and donkeys were also cleansed through water as spoils of war and divided among the peoples. So too the thousands of shekels of items of silver, gold, bronze, and iron were purified through fire and also apportioned out to the tribes. On the final day of purification, Joshua and Caleb were getting ready to return to camp. They were in Joshua's tent eating a small meal of goat and bread. Joshua took a sip of wine from his goatskin flask. Caleb watched him closely. He had been watching Joshua closely these seven days. Joshua looked refreshed. And he looked different. Like he was a changed man from the one whose pursuit of rigid excessive holiness rose to a crescendo of self-righteous vengeance and hate. He had come to the end of himself and was crushed by his own unrighteousness. — Brian Godawa

It seems like as we stand there I'm watching my whole life with Hana, our entire friendship, fall away: sleepover parties with forbidden midnight bowls of popcorn; all the times we rehearsed for Evaluation Day, when Hana would steal a pair of her father's old glasses, and bang on her desk with a ruler whenever I got an answer wrong, and we always started choking with laughter halfway through; the time she put a fist, hard, in Jillian Dawson's face because Jillian said my blood was diseased; eating ice cream on the pier and dreaming of being paired and living in identical houses, side by side. All of it is being sucked into nothing, like sand getting swept up by a current. — Lauren Oliver

It's a different rhythm than most movies. For a lot of the actors, you're 12,000 miles away from home. It becomes a way of life - getting up at five in the morning, shooting every day, day in day out, for 270 days. The new cast playing the dwarves were carrying incredibly heavy weights in their suits, they sat through hours of make-up every day. So it's quite challenging from a stamina point of view. — Andy Serkis

Meditation is warm-up exercise for the mind, so that you can jog through the rest of the day without getting agitated or spraining your patience. — Eknath Easwaran

I've always liked the idea of memoirs, going into someone else's life, going through someone else's day and getting out of your own head. — Isabel Gillies

It was a tough night," Marcus said briefly, another humorless smile crossing his mouth. "But they got what they paid for." "Jesus," Thomas murmured. Marcus slanted a glance at him, and his green eyes were hard, brittle. "Don't think about it, pet. I don't. No one who lives it dwells on this fucking stuff. You just thank God or your own balls for getting yourself through it, pulling yourself up into something better. The day I see pity in your face, I want your fucking ass out of my life. — Joey W. Hill

I came to understand that very day that I was always angry because I was selfish. I felt that someone was always infringing on my rights, getting in my space, messing with my things, disregarding my positions, and so on, which offended me, leading to inappropriate behavior. Through wisdom provided by God it dawned on me that I should step outside of the center of the circle so that everything wasn't always about me. — Ben Carson

He told her that he had got into acting by way of his religion. His family belonged to some Christian sect Greta had never heard of. This sect was not numerous but very rich, or at least some of them were. They had built a church with a theater in it in a town on the prairie. That was where he started to act before he was ten years old. They did parables from the Bible but also present day, about the awful things that happened to people who didn't believe what they did. His family was very proud of him and of course so he was of himself. He wouldn't dream of telling them all that went on when the rich converts came to renew their vows and get revitalized in their holiness. Anyway he really liked getting all the approval and he liked the acting. Till one day he just got the idea that he could do the acting and not go through all that church stuff. — Alice Munro

The anxiety prevalent in our day and the succession of economic and political catastrophes our world has been going through are both symptoms of the same underlying cause, namely the traumatic changes occurring in Western society. Fascist and Nazi totalitarianism, for example, do not occur because a Hitler or Mussolini decides to seize power. When a nation, rather, is prey to insupportable economic want and is psychologically and spiritually empty, totalitarianism comes in to fill the vacuum; and the people sell their freedom as a necessity for getting rid of the anxiety which is too great for them to bear any longer. — Rollo May

I've fallen for her ... So hard. I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have if felt this. Nothing like this ... I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching. Love is a heartless bastard. I'm driving myself insane. — Tahereh Mafi

Marriage is like working in a coal mine. You hack away in the dark, day after day, busting rock, and you think you're not getting anywhere, and then all of a sudden, this little sliver of sunlight appears and you say to yourself, oh, that's what I've been waiting for
just a little light, just a little bit of hope
a sign, maybe, that will get me through. And ... it does. — Adriana Trigiani

She has a bookshelf for a heart, and ink runs through her veins, she'll write you into her story with the typewriter in her brain. Her bookshelf's getting crowded. With all the stories that's she's penned, of all the people who flicked through her pages but closed the book before it ended. And there's one pushed to the very back, that sits collecting dust, with its title in her finest writing, 'The One's Who Lost My Trust'. There's books shes scared to open, and books she doesn't close. Stories of every person she's met stretched out in endless rows. Some people have only one sentence while others once held a main part, thousands of inky footprints that they've left across her heart. You might wonder why she does this, why write of people she once knew? But she hopes one day she'll mean enough for someone to write about her too. — E.H.

My main question that I ask of my characters is, 'What does it feel like to be you? And how do you get through the day? Where do you find the hope and faith to endure getting through the days, and what are your days like?' — Stewart O'Nan

But I really thought that me and her had something. Then I thought about how a lot of people, black and white don't like the idea of a white geezer and a black bird getting it on. One day it won't matter a fuck, we'll all be coffee-coloured with a tint of yellow. Till then we got a load of grief tae get through. — Irvine Welsh