Daniel Keyes Quotes

If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves.

I think about giving up. I almost do.

Sometimes holding on was all you could do.

It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired - you quit when the gorilla is tired.

If you've ever been in a position in your life where you just can't take any more, you just have to get through the next second, and the next second after that.

No matter how bad things get you got to go on living, even if it kills you.

I'm not going to stop having problems.

It's not who's the best - it's who can take the most pain.

Great fighters get beat, and great fighters come back.

The only thing I know how to do is survive.

I have lived long enough to be battered by the realities of life, and not too long to be downed by them.

Not everyone is lucky enough to understand how delicious it is to suffer.

And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain - the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and head - but it was manageable. I could live through it. I didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.

It is sad that today many times people give up in the hard times and never get to enjoy the fruit of all their labor.

One who does not fall, does not stand up.

Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

Hey. Pain can last a moment, it can last a day, it can last a week, it can last a long..long time, but it can't last forever and the only thing that can last forever is if you quit.

As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.

I'm suffering very much, but am I suffering very well? That's the point!

No matter where you go, poor people have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve.

Some of us say, "Lord knows how much I can bear". I think you can assume that you can bear more than you have a right to bear.

Surviving, that's all. That's all I have in mind .

I had to use my wits or else I'd have been sunk - and nothings going to sink me. Everyone was always pulling at me, tugging at me, as if they wanted a piece of me. It was always, 'do this, do that,' and not just on the job but off, too. God, I've tried to stay intact, whole.

We fight to keep something alive rather than in the expectation that anything will triumph.