Tough Stuff Quotes & Sayings

When I finally made it across the dune, I found her gazing at the ocean and holding a weathered fence post as if it were the mast of a sailboat.
'That was quite a sprint you did on that soft sand,' I said, huffing and puffing. She smiled, but didn't respond. So I clarified, 'That sand is hard to get through.'
She laughed. 'It's easier to get through the tough stuff if I give it a little muscle.'
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and said coyly, 'I think there's a life lesson there.'
'Nah,' she refuted. 'I've exercised my whole life. Lots of practice. It comes naturally now.'
Like I said. — Emily Colson

My first acting lessons were Shakespeare. The first time I ever started working with a coach was doing scenes from 'Measure for Measure,' which were tough dramatic scenes. And then 'Taming of the Shrew,' which required comedic timing. And that's the kind of stuff I love. — Dave Bautista

There was some kind of X-men emergency, so all the teachers were gone. This happens every now and then. It's one of the perks of having super heroes for your teachers - when the world is about to end (which is like at least twice a month), school gets canceled. Heck, three weeks ago there was a big chemistry final for the upperclassmen. Beast was the teacher - he's this big, burly guy who can do acrobatic stuff like a monkey, but he also happens to be a super-genius. He's, like, legendary for his tough finals, so there were kids walking through the halls, going, Oh, God, please let Galactus try to eat the earth. Please please please let there be an alien invasion by the Skrulls! — Barry Lyga

I think there are some mass destruction capabilities that are still inside Iraq. I think there's some weapons that have been shipped over the border to Syria. But I don't think we're going to find that their capabilities provided the imminent threat that many feared in this country. So I think it's going to be a tough search, but I think there's stuff there. — Wesley Clark

I don't know, I think that if I had any regrets, that would cancel out the great people that I have in my life. All the tough stuff that I've gone through that I don't wish on no one else has brought a beautiful community to me. — Lemon Andersen

It's tough to know who's better in cliff diving. Like, you see a guy diving off a cliff and you go, Oh, man, a guy diving off a cliff! And then another guy'd dive- Oh, there's another guy diving off a cliff there. But you can't tell who's better, y'know? Like, uh- if you survive at all, hey, you're a great- you're a great cliff diver there. There's only two classifications in cliffdiving. There's, uh- 'Grand Champion' and then, uh- 'Stuff On a Rock.' Very hard to make a comeback in that sport, I'll tell you that. — Norm MacDonald

People can be tough as hell. They can go through some really heavy stuff... with a genuine smile... — Adam Scythe

Just keep in mind that sometimes when you tell yourself things are fine, you're really just driving the tough stuff even deeper. — Tera Lynn Childs

There's a lot of unexpected things. Wonderful things, tough things, but there's always somebody just ready to pitch in. That's probably the heaviest thing, the constant amount of support because it makes you just want to do even better. It makes you want to do stuff for the fans, makes you want to do stuff for the people on the show. I love it. — Scott M. Gimple

You gotta not care about what people think in general about you. I'm not talking about bad stuff, if you're a nasty person, because I don't consider myself a mean person, I consider that I know what i want and I'm tough. But I'm very emotional and un-tough on a lot of levels, I cry very easily, I'm sensitive and I don't think that's a bad thing. — Joan Jett

But I like Alice. And I can tell that she's had to face some tough stuff. You can see it in her face when she thinks you're not looking. — Mamenosuke Fujimaru

As [Martin Luther] King said, it never cost anybody a dime to integrate the lunch counters. When you start talking about trying to deal with jobs and hunger and things that require investment, then that's really the tough stuff, because everybody wants to do right if it doesn't cost them anything. — Marian Wright Edelman

Yeah, I play a lot of their games. Going way back to Bulls vs. Lakers to the later Live stuff, I go at it quite a bit. More than anything tough, I play Madden. — Jason Kidd

That GOP leadership, that establishment, they've got to get their stuff together I love what they believe in, I believe in it too. But they've got to get tough, man. You know what? It's not just the New England Patriots who are dealing with deflated balls right now. — Sarah Palin

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out."
He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks. — Helen Brown

My favorite thing about being famous ... it's not really as big of a deal as everybody says it is. Being on the road is tough, doing interviews, and all the stuff. It's still pretty tough. — Aaron Carter

I liked my house. I liked my stuff. I had to start over once. I don't want to have to do it again. But life says, 'Tough bounce,' and what are my options? Take it on the chin and keep marching. — Tami Hoag

Every great accomplishment has its share of struggle, adversity and pain. Great achievement cannot exist without them. To reap the rewards of success in our marriages, in the lives of our children, and in our professional careers we must be prepared to push through some pretty tough moments. But trust me... on the other side of that struggle awaits an intrinsic reward that is worth more than gold. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

We were on a tour, and there were some chord formations that were tough for me to play when I was a kid ... it had become apparent that there was some stuff I wanted to do that [would require me] to learn how to do that. So I wrote the song and used some of these chord formations so I would have to play them. I thought it would be a great teaching vehicle for a while, and it was, but it ended up as a performance song. — Jorma Kaukonen

A lot of negative stuff has happened to me - that's why I'm tough - but I don't want people to be like, 'Oh, poor Becky,' because I'm not a victim. — Rebecca Ferguson

A WORD OF CAUTION The material in this chapter is "tough stuff." It should be read, studied, and prayed about when life is more or less routine. It should be stored up or hidden in our hearts (see Psalm 119:11) for the time of adversity when we must draw upon its truth. Above all, we need to be very sensitive about instructing someone else in the sovereignty of God and encouraging that person to trust God when he or she is in the midst of adversity or pain. It is much easier to trust in the sovereignty of God when it is the other person who is hurting. We need to be like Jesus, of whom it was said, "A bruised reed he will not break" (Matthew 12:20). Let us not be guilty of breaking a bruised reed (a heavy heart) by insensitive treatment of the heavy doctrine of the sovereignty of God. — Jerry Bridges

That no-hitter stuff was a long time ago; I don't think that has anything to do with it. I'm just going through a tough time. — Johan Santana

I look around me and I don't see any rock'n'roll at the moment. Instead it's all choreography and stylists and wigs and stuff. It's like they're afraid to let the music breathe. No one has their own identity like the Ronettes did back in the day. We had the skirts with the slits up the side, sort of tough, sort of Spanish Harlem cool, but sweet too. We didn't have no dancers, we didn't have no goddamn wigs. — Ronnie Spector

It's tough to follow Jesus while clutching on to our rights, our honor, our reputation. This kingdom stuff isn't for the fainthearted. — Preston Sprinkle

You're also going to be out of luck with weapons. And weapons are mandatory for zombie apocalypse survival.'
Camilla is silent for a moment. 'You couldn't just beat them to death with Tupperware? That stuff's tough.'
I grin. 'Maybe if it's filled with Adrian's grandma's cupcakes. I think those are a valuable addition to any arsenal. — Melissa Keil

The musical stuff I'd go up for was always funny, sexy, tough-as-nails, heart-of-gold characters. — Bebe Neuwirth

Language and reality are kept strictly apart - reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn't care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn't. — Lev Grossman

It's the strangest feeling at the end of pregnancy: you look down at this huge belly and try to imagine how some little person, whom you haven't even met, is going to emerge from it any day and completely change your lives. First, you wonder how this pregnancy, to which you've grown so accustomed over much of the last year, can, with barely any notice, come to an abrupt end. Then you try to fathom how this baby is ever going to come out; your bowling ball stomach seems misproportioned for what lies between it and the outside world. And only then do you realize what it all means-that the easy part, pregnancy, is almost over, and it's time to gear up for the tough stuff: childbirth! — Lise Eliot

'I think that's why his asking me to pull the plug hurt so much. He kept saying if I really loved him, I should have been able to do it. And I thought, if he really loved me, he would never have asked.' — Barbara Elsborg

America is tough for rock music. Rock n' roll used to be the main music for the youth, and it's not so much anymore. It's hip-hop and stuff. — Taylor Hawkins

The real challenge of being a flight attendant is getting people out. The training requires that they demonstrate they can evacuate an aircraft within 90 seconds, but of course, a lot of stuff that is easy to do in training turns out to be tough in practice. — Philip Greenspun

Ari's coming with backup. Should I pretend we barely survived without his help or gloat that we didn't need him at all?"
"Tough decision," I said.
"You can't go wrong with either one," Kade said.
"You guys are no fun. I have to go with the gloating. But no mention of that magic stuff. It ruins the effect." Janco rushed off. — Maria V. Snyder

Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic," Fogg said expansively. "It doesn't really make sense. It's a little too perfect, don't you think? If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so. Words and thoughts don't change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart - reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn't care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn't. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. "Little children don't know that. Magical thinking: that's what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded. — Lev Grossman

It's tough not to keep thinking of the past, but you have to look ahead. Because the stuff in front of you is where you can make a difference and help the most. — Marin Thomas

I sit on my bed and think about Nader McMillan and wonder what I'm going to do. Ignore him. Stand up to him. Avoid him. Be "tough." I think of the stuff Dad has said over the years. How he finally gave up suggesting things. Why are you asking me this? I never figured out what to do about my own bullies. How am I supposed to know what to do with yours? — A.S. King

How about this miracle ... God says if you plant the seed I will make the tree. Wow, you can't have a better arrangement than that. First, it gives God the tough end of the deal. What if you had to make a tree? That would keep you up late at night trying to figure out how to make a tree. God says, No, leave the miracle part to me. I've got the seed, the soil, the sunshine, the rain and the seasons. I'm God and all this miracles stuff is easy for me. I have reserved something very special for you and that is to plant the seed. — Jim Rohn

The Broadway schedule is so tough, so relentless there was almost no time to enjoy all the stuff. — John Cariani

People think it must be wonderful being in movies or on television, but it can be very tough on a child. I had two friends in elementary school. That was it. There was a clique of girls that were brutal to me. They pulled some very mean stuff. My two friends got me through it. Without them, I would have been all alone. — Angela Cartwright

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

It was tough to try to be serious in front of Halle Berry and Pierce Brosnan with all this stuff in my face. There's never been a character that's looked this extreme. — Rick Yune

I miss Texas so bad. That's the hard part about being out here in L.A., trying to pursue acting and music and lighting and production and stuff. It takes a lot of time out from your personal life, and I can only get back to Texas three times a year at most. It's tough. — Jackson Rathbone

I'm a pixy, Rachel. I may look all tough and stuff, but I got wings, and I know infatuation when I see it. — Kim Harrison

Tough guy Spike was always the funnest, but I'm most proud of the more recent stuff, the last season, I think. — James Marsters

I love how my sport reaches out to people with the music and story lines, the glory of standing up for three or four minutes of tough, arduous, gravity-defying skating and all the stuff that goes with it. — Kurt Browning

If you listen long enough you can hear my skin grow tough love is painful to the touch must be made of stronger stuff. — Tom Petty

I've auditioned for animation stuff for a long time; that's a tough field to crack into. I don't think I have the strongest voice. I don't have a theater-trained voice or a radio voice, but I think I make good character choices. — Brian Huskey

Betsy: You gentlemen stand around and look tough while I do an astral reconnaissance.
Fantomex: I confess to feeling inferior in the company of such a gifted telepath. But for you, Warren, to be so.. dependent. It must be emasculating.
Warren: Oh yeah, it's a real hardship. Worst part is all the sex it leads to. Terrible stuff to endure. — Rick Remender

He [Donald Trump] is a tough boss. I've known him for decades. He hasn't changed very much. He's a driven person, highly intelligent, and he's very motivated, very charismatic, and he is tough as nails in the sense there's no slack there. You can't put anything over on Donald. Donald can see right through someone trying to dissemble or spin stuff. — Geraldo Rivera

It is cool to make a pilot because you get to do all the fun stuff, and then you get to leave when all the tough stuff starts. — Niels Arden Oplev

Everybody thinks it's glamorous and this spy versus spy stuff is so exciting, but working in that industry and being a CIA operative, like a field officer, is tough. That's a difficult job that usually dismantles their lives in some capacity. — Ryan Reynolds

What matters most in a child's development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. — Paul Tough

I told them we're tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we're for, I said, not just what we're against. We don't want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff - biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice - but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask. — Rachel Held Evans

It's sad. There's a lot about this industry that a lot of people don't know about and don't find out about. There are a lot of tough things and trials and stuff that you're faced with. Sometimes, God has other plans for people. Sometimes bands can't stick through it. It depends on the situation. Keep praying for the bands that you like, seriously, because a lot of things will try to get in the way of being together. We've been blessed with not deal with those yet, but if we ever did ... ? — Trevor McNevan

When people ask you to do stuff, it's not your idea anymore, so it's tough to get behind it. — Ira Kaplan

Producing good stuff can be quite tough, and it involves a lot of frustration, but I always like things to be jolly and happy, and I forget that's actually not the point at the end of the day. — Ewan McGregor

I read to learn, tech myself stuff and teach myself math and do complex formulas, and it's very, very tough, but I enjoy doing that and keeping my mind active. It definitely comes in handy, I feel I have a pretty good grasp, at more than a lot of musicians, of the business and finance world. — Jeff Kendrick

Our expertise is preparing foods in tough environments. We have a kitchen where we grill and roast and make smelly stuff happen, and then bring it to the site and warm it in a way that makes it taste just-cooked. — David Castle

When people write things on the Internet about me that aren't true, it's tough to deal with. Even if you're the most mellow person in the world, stuff like that bothers you eventually. — Phillip Phillips

This makes it tough to find a lot of solid material on him because so much of his work got discounted as irrelevant. Most of it just ends up buried in pseudo-science books. Pretty much the only place you can find him is lumped in with guys like Edgar Cayce or Immanuel Velikovsky. He believed in telepathy, shared dreaming, race memories, all that kind of stuff. The idea that people's minds can all connect on some extra-sensory level. — Peter Clines

There's all of this stuff where we have so much debate over nonsense; it could be cured if we had a better educational system, if we trained people to really try and look into things on their own. That's a tough thing to do, particularly with the educational system staggering. — Paul R. Ehrlich

Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff. — Colin Powell

I think you need to go through some stuff to really appreciate life and understand what it means to persevere, overcome and have faith. I think those tough times make you a stronger person. — Judith Hill

Winning a Grand Slam changes everything. There is so much off-court stuff to deal with. And there are expectations of keeping it going that make it tough. — Mary Pierce

It's a tough trick to be able to create an intelligent movie that has socio-political commentary, and also has the emotional and moving stuff, at the same time. — Jodie Foster

I'm trying to cut down a little on eating, on sodium, keep my blood pressure down, which is tough. Because I love food! I do, but it's unfair how everything that's bad for you tastes so good, and all the good stuff, veggies and green things, doesn't match up. — Ice Cube

From the Basement tapes
Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. "I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse," Eric said. "But I do."
Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn't done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him.
"Those are the most worthless apologies I've ever heard in my life," he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, "if you guys live."
"If you live?" Fuselier repeated. "They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry they would not do it! — Dave Cullen

I think by take eight you're kind of going, "Oh, wow, I don't know if I want to fall entirely off the roof again." That stuff is tough, and I'm also not 21 anymore. I just don't like cement. Cement isn't hilarious any more. — Ryan Reynolds