Kevin Barry Quotes

I'm older than I'd like and I'm creaky, but I'm doing alright.

Never say about anything, "I have lost it," but only "I have given it back." Is your child dead? It has been given back. Is your wife dead? She has been returned.

What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.

Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.

You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after " she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.

Face it," Gary told her kindly. "You'll never catch up. You just do as much as you can and take the punishments without saying anything. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't what they're really trying to teach us--to take plenty and keep our mouths shut.

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? But I was doomed to live.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

What can't be helped must be endured.

What would come, would come...and you would have to meet it, when it did.

Nothing could have survived our life.

Well if you can’t get what you love, You learn to love the things you’ve got .. If you can’t be what you want, You learn to be the things you’re not .. If you can’t get what you need, You learn to need the things that stop you dreaming

If it is our destiny to be hit by the train, we will be hit by the train. The only thing we can change is how the train turns us into a hamburger.

I'm hoping my children will save me from my vanity. If it doesn't, plastic surgery is an option... It sucks to have to grow older. We all have to accept it.

I've gotten a lot of comfort from the philosophy of the Roman Stoics. For me, one of the most powerful ideas of Stoicism is that you can't pick or choose in the world what you want to happen and what you don't want to happen, and that actually if you did get to choose, the version you would come up with would be unsociable, lame, and basically less beautiful than the truth.

If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal - with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever - in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before - I would, without a moment's hesitation, tell you to take a hike.

GRACE: All you can do is take it.

What kind of world is this? And what do you do about it? What do you do when the worst thing that can happen actually happens?

There are no do overs and some things just aren't going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is

In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead.

Life is very hard, isn't it? It does kill you, after all.

View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.

I want you to remember who you are, despite the bad things that are happening to you. Because those bad things aren't you. They are just things that happen to you. You need to accept that who you are and the things that happen you, are not one and the same.

You must endure, and not cry out against that which cannot be avoided.

Life must go on; I forget just why.