hard life Quotes

“I’ve committed to nothing...and that’s just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.”

“I’ve always wanted her hair, though I’d never tell her that. Where hers is like fire, my hair is what we call river brown. Dark at the root, pale at the ends, as the color leeches from our hair with the stress of Stilts life. Most keep their hair short to hide their gray ends but I don’t. I like the reminder that even my hair knows life shouldn’t be this way.”

“The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country — a border culture.”

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.”

“The water from the holes in the lakebed could be collected only in tiny amounts. If her mother tried to boil such a small amount, the pot would be dry long before they could count to two hundred.”

“I don’t want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings or love or happy endings.”

“You try to walk in the light.”

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.”

“‘Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard.’ She was crying upon his shoulder. ‘So damned hard, so damned hard,’ he repeated aimlessly; ‘it just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.’”

“I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought.”

“All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.”

“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”

“Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.”

“A real king’s life is perhaps a hard one; but a pretended king’s is, I warrant, much harder.”

“His father was mean with the lamps and only kept one up in front for the road ahead, so Meshak hated being out on the highway at night. He was afraid of the dark. It was not just the spirit world which frightened him, but the real world of robbers and highwaymen, especially near the forest.”

In the two years Halinka has spent in a home for girls, she has learned not to hope for anything, and to hold tightly to what she has.

The girls (in Halinka’s room) are 12 (well they’re in two grades so I’d guess different ages by at least a year) but they did seem a bit younger to me. Maybe 10? Maybe 11? Given their backgrounds and circumstances and given that this is historical fiction and not contemporary, I guess they could seem a bit younger to me than they are.

The story is about the day to day life in the home. Halinka struggles to make friends and finds it hard to trust. It is sensitively written and you feel for Halinka who seems to have had little joy or kindness in her life.

So Johnny begins the life of a stroller - begging on the street, sleeping where he can.

“For a few moments Abel watched Johnny. Then he stood up, stretching. ‘Well, like I said three weeks ago, it’s time.’ Again he looked at Johnny, crafty this time. ‘Anyhow, I’m going. You stay if you’re chicken. ’

Ben has the strange ability to soothe and control animals, and this makes him valuable to the older and crueler boy who hunts the animals Ben Calls.

“Suddenly the boy spotted a bear on the other side of the stream, if only he could find a way to kill it! He had an idea.”

“My father was always on the lookout for the short of things that would make life a bit easier for all of us. As there was never enough money to buy what was needed, we had to make the most of what we could find living around __ usually on the white man’s rubbish dumps.”