“I think the time is coming for struggle and uncertainty. It comes into every serious and beautiful life. I knew all along that it had to come.” ThinkingBeautifulStruggleSeriousUncertaintyVulnerabilityBeautiful Life Book:Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals Source: Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals
“Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality [...] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches.” WorldWayRealityBitsVisionWorryStruggleSeriousDemandIntellectualUnderstoodTinyBitesScholarFlawedPatchesBirthrightMayhemPedants Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
“In fact, there's an entire universe out there that's pretty much indifferent to struggles that big, no matter how serious they've been in your life.” MatterFactsBigsUniverseStruggleSeriousIndifferent Author:Sarah Polley
“The best memoirs - like This Boy's Life, or Crazy Brave [by Joy Harjo], for instance - bring you through a private river of storytelling that joins a major ocean of human struggle and joy. The act of enunciation - the forms and strategies of storytelling - are every bit as literarily serious as they are in poetry or other prose forms.” HumansFormJoyBitsBoysStruggleCrazySeriousOceanMajorsRiversStrategyBraveMemoirStorytellingInstanceProse Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“You win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot.” WinningUnderstandingCan DoStruggleSeriousCircumstancesAnalysis Author:Noam Chomsky
“I think if there hadn't been the one passage of the book that mostly abandons the humor, and focuses very intently on one person's struggle with cancer, it wouldn't have been a critical success. So that was a very deliberate decision, to say "Well, if you think it's all fun and games, it's not." So that was my approach: We're going to have as much fun as I can possibly provide, but the serious things that might normally pass by you are not going to be lost.” ThinkingBookFunDecisionStruggleSeriousCancerAbandon Author:Joshua Ferris