Pushing Though Quotes & Sayings

What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside. — Leo Tolstoy

Sometimes you just want to give up. Then you remember why you live. — Chen Chen

But in a way it's like looking at old photographs of yourself. There comes a point at which the record needs to be updated, because you've shed too many links with what you were. He doesn't quite know how it happened; all he knows is that he doesn't recognize himself in those stories any more, though he remembers the bursting feeling of writing them, something in himself massing and pushing irresistibly to be born. He hasn't had that feeling since; he almost thinks that to remain a writer he'd have to become one all over again, when he might just easily become an astronaut, or a farmer. It's as if he can't quite remember what drove him into words in the first place, all those years before, yet words are what he still deals in. I suppose it's a bit like marriage, he said. You build a whole structure on a period of intensity that's never repeated. It's the basis of your faith and sometimes you doubt it, but you never renounce it because too much of your life stands on that ground. — Rachel Cusk

Pushing through some viney branches, she comes into a clearing andfinds a sight that makes her hush
and not just her voice but every part of her, like feeling silence in her deep guts ...
It's something she can feel in the back of her throat, her dislike of the scene
as though what she's looking upon is unholy, the conjunction of chaos and order in a forced fit where everything is stretched and bent in the wrong way like those baby legs. — Alden Bell

Enzo narrows his eyes. He moves as if to grab Raffaele's wrist with his burning hands, to burn him alive from the inside out.
"Don't," Raffaele whispers to Enzo. And even though Enzo's eyes stay black, Raffaele does not flinch away. He remains where he is, surrounded by fire.
Enzo's eyes flicker. He blinks at Raffaele, confused, and then lowers his face toward him. Raffaele leans forward, closes his eyes, and rests his head against Enzo's shoulder. I do not need to touch them to know that Raffaele's energy is coursing through Enzo now, healing and soothing, calming, pushing against the fury of his own. — Marie Lu

One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don't realise they're self-harming. The phrase 'self-harm' brings up thoughts of 'cutting', but that's only a small portion of it. When you drink excessively to drown your sorrows to the point you throw up and can't see straight and/or, like a girl at my school, ended up being driven to hospital to have her stomach pumped, you've brought harm to yourself. If you take drugs to feel numb and it becomes an addiction that you can't break, you've self-harmed. When you starve yourself or binge eat to fit the latest fashions, you're pushing your body further than it can go.
We need to start treating ourselves how we deserve to be treated, even if you feel that no one else does. Prove to the world you ARE worth something by treating yourself with the utmost respect and hope that other people will follow your example. And even if they don't, at least one person in the world is treating you well: YOU. — Carrie Hope Fletcher

Sometimes, though, I feel that pushing books is a whole lot like pushing medicine. Think of books as pills. I have pills that cure ignorance and pills that cure boredom. I have pills to elevate moods and pills to open people's eyes to the awful truth: uppers and downers as they were. I sell pills to help people find themselves and pills to help them lose themselves when they require escape from the pressures and anxieties of life in a complex society ... — Tom Robbins

I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck. — Graham Greene

We do know that working-class Americans aren't just less likely to climb the economic ladder, they're also more likely to fall off even after they've reached the top. I imagine that the discomfort they feel at leaving behind much of their identity plays at least a small role in this problem. One way our upper class can promote upward mobility, then, is not only by pushing wise public policies but by opening their hearts and minds to the newcomers who don't quite belong. Though — J.D. Vance

...but now, though, because I have still not gotten there, I feel as if distance- as if distance itself-has developed a density, a viscosity, and that I am pushing against it, that I am fighting distance's density; so I press the pedal, and the car surges, and I attempt to push to the terminus of distance, and when this does not happen and I am still not there I feel as if the tenacity of time will smother me- that I will be smothered by the atrocity of distance, by the painful failure of simultaneity; and I struggle to keep the gas pedal within civilized limits, and I go astride cars and around cars, and I am doused in the unthought thought: Please let me get to him quickly; — Evan Dara

This is my first time working with a human," Werd said, to Wilson. "How's it going so far?" Wilson asked. "Not bad," Werd said. "You're kind of ugly, though." "I get that a lot," Wilson said. "I bet you do," Werd said. "I won't hold it against you." "Thanks," Wilson said. "But if you smell, I'm pushing you out an airlock," Werd said. — John Scalzi

With all the arrangements made, Marcus carried Lillian to the largest guest room in the building, where a bath and food were sent up as quickly as possible. It was sparely furnished but very clean, with an ample bed covered in pressed linen and soft, faded quilts. An old copperplate slipper tub was set before the hearth and filled by two chambermaids carrying steaming kettles. As Lillian waited for the bathwater to cool sufficiently, Marcus bullied her into eating a bowl of soup, which was quite tolerable, though its ingredients were impossible to identify. "What are those little brown chunks?" Lillian asked suspiciously, opening her mouth reluctantly as he spooned more in.
"It doesn't matter. Swallow."
"Is it mutton? Beef? Did it originally have horns? Hooves? Feathers? Scales? I don't like to eat something when I don't know what - "
"More," he said inexorably, pushing the spoon into her mouth again.
"You're a tyrant."
"I know. Drink some water. — Lisa Kleypas

Booby traps or fail-safes
Booby traps or fail-safes are dangerous internal events that are triggered to happen if the survivor investigates too much of his or her own training, and/or talks about or becomes aware of memories he or she (the front person) is not supposed to know. The effects of booby traps include such things as suicide attempts, serious self-harm, or falling into terrible depression. It is important to know that the overwhelming emotions experienced when a booby trap is set off actually belong to real, specific memories. A booby trap can be set off without the knowledge of the main outside personality. Because of such traps, it is very important to go very slowly in discovering what happened, if you are a survivor of this kind of abuse. Even though parts of you are involved in setting off the booby traps, they may not know the effects of what they are doing (pushing buttons, turning switches, and so forth), and it might be difficult to anticipate what will happen. — Alison Miller

And the thing about jazz, through all the business involved in practicing and improvement, it's always sweet: the improvement that you notice in the ability to express yourself, the feeling of playing, pushing yourself out into an open space through a sound, man. That's an unbelievable feeling, an uplifting feeling of joy to be able to express the range of what you feel and see, have felt and have seen. A lot of this has nothing to do with you. It comes from another time, another space. To be able to channel those things and then project them though an instrument, that's something that brings unbelievable joy. — Wynton Marsalis

Eye on the shuttlecock, she ran forward, raised her battledore high, and slammed right into Henry Weston's chest. The wind knocked from her, Emma lost her balance and might have fallen had not Mr. Weston's arms shot out and caught her about the waist and shoulder. "Oh," she cried, embarrassed to have plowed into the man. Embarrassed to find his arms around her. Embarrassed to find she liked it. "I'm so sorry," she blurted, pushing away from him. "Don't be. I admire your singular focus. My goodness, Miss Smallwood, where is the timid little creature who flinched at every flying bird as though it were a cricket ball headed for her nose?" Emma straightened and righted her off-kilter bonnet. "I was determined not to embarrass myself," she admittedly breathlessly. "Only to do just that." He chuckled, and their eyes met in a moment of shared levity. Then he sobered. "Thank you for the laugh, Miss Smallwood. Just what I needed after yesterday. — Julie Klassen

INFJs are often accused of pushing people away, even though we long for deep relationships with others. — Marissa Baker

I am so sorry," a gentle, unmistakably feminine voice interrupted.

I stiffened, knowing exactly who the voice belonged to, and consequently why Dale and Evans had adopted their hazy faces.

"It's not an interruption." Dale shook his head, standing.

"Not at all." Evans also stood, his smile was small and hopeful, his voice coaxing as though she were a skittish animal.

I knew better. Where these two yokels saw a weak, sensitive flower - an angelic pushover, ripe for the pushing - I saw an opportunist in banana-cake clothing. Let the record show, I did not roll my eyes. — Penny Reid

Never give up and always keep fighting, because though times may be tough, the sacrifices do pay off, so just keep pushing towards your dream and just love it at the same time and enjoy it. — Gabby Douglas

Here are the things I want for you -
I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.
I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don't know if what we had was love, but if it wasn't, I hope to never fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.
I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.
Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And if I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. - I want you to know that most of all. — Lang Leav

What do they mean to you?" he asked, leaning back into the portable thicket of his gray vested suit. Beverly took back her pages and studied them. After a while, she looked up. "They mean to me that the universe . . . growls, and sings. No, shouts." The learned astronomer was shocked. In dealing with the public he was often confronted by lunatics and visionaries, some of whose theories were elegant, some absurd, and some, perhaps, right on the mark. But those were usually old bearded men who lived in lofts crowded with books and tools, eccentrics who walked around the city, pushing carts full of their belongings, madmen from state institutions that could not hold them. There was always something arresting and true about their thoughts, as if their lunacy were as much a gift as an affliction, though the heavy weight of the truth they sensed so strongly had clouded their reason, and all the wonder in what they said was shattered and disguised. He — Mark Helprin

As he watched her, Colin was visited by the strangest feeling, unfurling warm and buttery inside him. It was a sense of privilege and mute wonder, as though he'd witnessed one of those small, everyday miracles of spring. Like a licked-clean foal taking its first steps on wobbly legs. Or a new butterfly pushing scrunched, damp wings from a chrysalis.
Before his eyes, she'd transformed into a new creature. Still a bit awkward and uncertain, but undaunted. And well on her way to being beautiful.
Colin scratched his neck. He wished there were someone nearby he could turn to and say, 'Would you look at that? — Tessa Dare

He gripped her wrist before it could continue its progress, senses too over loaded to withstand more. Though for some unknown reason, rather than pushing it away he did little more than halt its progress, trapping it between his heart and hand. Her eyes flew upward to meet his, surprise and curiosity in their emerald depths.

He lost himself in those eyes. — Amy Cook

When I was a child, the lessons my father taught me had been about perseverance, never to accept limitations that stood in my way. As an adult, watching him in his final years, I also saw how to come to terms with limits that couldn't simply be wished away. When to shift from pushing against limits to making the best of them is not often readily apparent. But it is clear that are times when the cost of pushing exceeds its value. Helping my father through the struggle to define that moment was simultaneously among the most painful and most privileged experiences of my life. Part of the way my father handled the limits he faced was by looking at them without illusion. Though his circumstances sometimes got him down, he never pretended they were better than they were. He always understood that life is short and one's place in the world is small. But he also saw himself as a link in a chain of history. — Atul Gawande

Harry!" said Fred, elbowing Percy out of the way and bowing deeply. "Simply splendid to see you, old boy-"
"Marvelous," said George, pushing Fred aside and seizing Harry's hand in turn. "Absolutely spiffing."
Percy scowled.
"That's enough, now," said Mrs. Weasley.
"Mum!" said Fred as though he'd only just spotted her and seizing her hand too. "How really corking to see you- — J.K. Rowling

Pushing through fear was what eventually set you free. — Martina Boone

She leaned back against the step, smoothing her hands over her stomach. Though she wasn't showing yet, just in the last week she'd started to look different. It wasn't something I could describe easily. It was like those stop-action films of flowers blooming that we watched in Biology. Every frame something is happening, something little that would be missed in real time - the sprout pushing, bit by bit, from the ground, the petals slowly moving outward. To the naked eye, it's just suddenly blooming, color today where there was none before. But in real time, it's always building, working to show itself, to become. — Sarah Dessen

There's nothing more daunting than a musical, but there's also no more direct line to joy. Getting there, though, is like pushing treacle up stairs. — Tim Curry

So Yoda sounds like our best bet as an energy source. But with world electricity consumption pushing 2 terawatts, it would take a hundred million Yodas to meet our demands. All things considered, switching to Yoda power probably isn't worth the trouble - though it would definitely be green. — Randall Munroe

Gradually, strength returned to Yorda's body and she gripped his hand. Ico gripped back. Yorda sat up on the floor, but her eyes were still distant.
Suddenly, Ico felt cold. A chill emanated from Yorda's body as he held her in his arms, as though she were a pitcher that had just been filled with ice water. He had the sensation that something else was inside the girl, pushing aside the Yorda he knew. — Miyuki Miyabe

I don't like people feeling like they've been cheated out of their money, and I too have been caught in the back of floor shows, only to inspect the backs of necks and the mudded sounds pushing though bodies. — Brian Chippendale

If any writer in this country has collected as fine and passionate a group of readers as I have, they're fortunate and lucky beyond anyone's imagination. It remains a shock to me that I've had a successful writing career. Not someone like me; Lord, there were too many forces working against me, too many dark currents pushing against me, but it somehow worked. Though I wish I'd written a lot more, been bolder with my talent, more forgiving of my weaknesses, I've managed to draw a magic audience into my circle. They come to my signings to tell me stories, their stories. The ones that have hurt them and made their nights long and their lives harder. — Pat Conroy

commonly, though, a disturbed teenager will be unpleasant: aggressive, belligerent, obnoxious, irritable, hostile, lazy, whiny, untrustworthy, sometimes with poor personal hygiene. But the fact that they're so difficult, so dedicated to pushing us away, does not mean they do not need help. In fact, these traits may be signals that they do. — Sue Klebold

Disaster followed disaster ... the hero stuck in there, though. Macon had long ago noticed that all adventure movies had the same moral: Perseverance pays. Just once he'd like to see a hero like himself
not a quitter, but a man who did face facts and give up gracefully when pushing on was foolish. — Anne Tyler

When I was little, I loved running in the rain. There was something almost freeing about it. The exhilaration of your blood pumping, the quick shallow breaths, and the way the wind brushes past your body. Want to know my most favorite part? That unstoppable feeling from pushing myself to the breaking point gets me every time. Now though? Well ... it's complicated. — Amy Lunderman

I feel cool about making music and I feel secure pushing boundaries in my music. But things like videos and photos I find really difficult. I don't really like being in front of a camera - even though it is my job and I must act like I do. — Erika M. Anderson

If nothing's working for you, if you feel as though you're pushing forward against the grain, the most productive and proactive thing you can do is nothing. Nature is turning you inward, to gain power through peace, rather than outward to gain power through activity. — Martha N. Beck

And even though they fail us every bit as readily as we fail ourselves, even though they prove just as incapable of fulfilling us as all the other people do in our lives, we still keep pushing that gimme button like blasted morons, fully expecting that the next time we snag whatever comes out of it will be the time when the satisfaction finally takes hold, when the good feelings finally stick around and stay. And so like clockwork, we go down in flames again and again to our alcohol abuse or our sexual lust or our sweet tooth or our credit line - whatever particular desire is so powerful and predictable at deceiving us. We grab for things that have never failed to disappoint us in the past, thinking that what we must need more than anything is more of it ... more of the same thing that's never been able to satisfy us before. That's the call of the world for you. And it's madness. — Matt Chandler

It's going to be like an ... aura, I guess."
He looked down at me and raised an eyebrow. "Explain?"
"Like even though there are outside forces pushing through the walls, in here it's like a bubble of goodness. Like coming home."
I could feel him smiling and it encouraged me to elaborate. "When I think of how others would see it, I imagine them seeing a force of goodness overshadowing a force of evil, protecting it. — Jessica Shirvington

As though he sensed her thoughts, Gavin turned and met her gaze. Several seconds passed and he winked, as if to assure her that her worries were unnecessary. One side of his mouth raised in a lopsided smile, he turned back to her brothers, and Alex refocused on Ella and Vivi's conversation, pushing her questions to the back of her mind for the time being, and promising herself she'd find a moment alone with him later. — Sarah MacLean

As I had to do whenever I glimpsed this river, I thought of Phineas. Not of the tree and pain, but of one of his favorite tricks, Phineas in exaltation, balancing on one foot on the prow of a canoe like a river god, his raised arms invoking the air to support him, face transfigured, body a complex set of balances and compensations, each muscle aligned in perfection with all the others to maintain this supreme fantasy of achievement, his skin glowing from immersions, his whole body hanging between river and sky as though he had transcended gravity and might by gently pushing upward with his foot glide a little way higher and remain suspended in space, encompassing all the glory of the summer and offering it to the sky. — John Knowles

Whenever I took a step forward, it seemed as though life was pushing me five steps back. — Jenni Rivera

I do not know who I am anymore. I though I was animal. I am no longer so sure. It's hard to say what makes the mind piece things together in a sudden lightning flash. I've come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit too has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows when the harm is too much to bear. If it deems the injury too great the spirit cocoons the wound, in the same fashion that the body forms a cyst around infection, until the time comes that it can deal with it. For some people that time never comes. Some stay fractured, forever broken. You see them on the street pushing carts, you see them in the faces of regulars at a bar. My cocoon was that room. — Karen Marie Moning

Sometimes he wished he didn't have a sister, though he loved Deenie and still remembered the feeling he had when he caught that kid Ethan pushing her off the swing set in the school yard in fifth grade. And how time seemed to speed up until he was shoving the kid into the fence and tearing his jacket. The admiring look his sister gave him after, the way his parents pretended to be mad at him but he could tell they weren't.
These days, it was pretty different. There'd be those moments he was forced to think about her not just as Deenie but as the girl whose slender tank tops hung over the shower curtain. Like bright streamers, like the flair the cheerleaders threw at games.
Sometimes he wished he didn't have a sister. — Megan Abbott

It was a sense of privilege and mute wonder, as though he'd witnessed one of those small, everyday miracles of spring. Like a licked-clean foal taking its first steps on wobbly legs. Or a new butterfly pushing scrunched, damp wings from a chrysalis. — Tessa Dare

I don't. But if I had your love, I wouldn't waste it like he does. He's playing a game with you. He'll regret pushing you away, though, when he realizes I'm here, waiting to catch you. — Jessica Hawkins

You're no mistake. I can tell. Even though I can't catch your scent, my animal is pushing me to take you. — Milly Taiden

For the first time I was flying by jet propulsion. No engine vibrations. No torque and no lashing sound of the propeller. Accompanied by a whistling sound, my jet shot through the air. Later when asked what it felt like, I said, "It felt as though angels were pushing". — Adolf Galland

What had happened, for instance, at one of the war's biggest battles, the Battle of Midway? It was in the Pacific, there was something about aircraft carriers. Wasn't there a movie about it, one of those Hollywood all-star behemoths in which a lot of admirals look worried while pushing toy ships around a map? (Midway, released in 1976 and starring Glenn Ford, Charlton Heston, and -- inevitably -- Henry Fonda.) A couple of people were even surprised to hear that Midway Airport was named after the battle, though they'd walked past the ugly commemorative sculpture in the concourse so many times. All in all, this was a dispiriting exercise. The astonishing events of that morning, the "fatal five minutes" on which the war and the fate of the world hung, had been reduced to a plaque nobody reads, at an airport with a vaguely puzzling name, midway between Chicago and nowhere at all. — Lee Sandlin

I kept pushing against the black, though, almost a reflex. I wasn't trying to lift it. I was just resisting. Not allowing it to crush me completely. I wasn't Atlas, and the black felt as heavy as a planet; I couldn't shoulder it. All I could do was not be entirely obliterated. — Stephenie Meyer

My chair rolls to a stop. his voice cut short, followed by a thump and sliding sound. My wheelchair rolls forward again. I look back and see Ragnar pushing it innocently along. Sevro isn't in the hallway behind us. I frown, wondering where he went, till he bursts out of a side passage.
"You! Troll!" Sevro shouts. "I'm a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!" Sevro looks at the floor of the hallway. "Wait. Where is it? Dammit, Ragnar. Where is my peanut bar? You know how many people I had to kill to get that? Six! Six!"
Ragnar chews quietly above me, and though I'm probably mistaken, I think I see him smile. — Pierce Brown