‚American Graffiti‘ was unpleasant because of the fact that there was no money, no time, and I was compromising myself to death.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

Life is warfare.

What I call my ‚self‘ now is hardly a person at all. It’s mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

The Premier League is one of the most difficult in the world. There’s five, six, or seven clubs that can be the champions. Only one can win, and all the others are disappointed and live in the middle of disaster.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

What prevails in every corner of this globalized world is the real struggle of our species for its own survival.

Normally, when someone we love is turning away from a struggle, we self-protect by also turning away. That’s definitely my first response. I think change is more likely to happen if both partners have common language and a shared lens to see problems.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.

It take many a year, mon, and maybe some bloodshed must be, but righteousness someday prevail.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

Mickey Rourke’s character in ‚The Wrestler‘ – that was my dad, that was my uncles, that was so many members of my family. It was the only thing they knew. And then they would end up wrestling for a hundred bucks, go to autograph signings for two hundred bucks.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

I’m a hard guy to live with. I’m like a caged animal. I’m up all night walking around the living room. It’s hard for me to come down from what I do.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

Drink is the only opponent I have been unable to beat.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

I try to make it look easy, but the behind-the-scenes stuff is the challenge.

I can’t do nothing just a little.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

I did suffer a lot since karting, with my size and everything, not really having a clue what to do when I started karting. So I suffered in every category: F4, F3, F2. Not so much F2 but I’ve had to kind of play catch-up quite a bit and in some ways, F1 was a bit nicer with power steering.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family… Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

I wrote ‚Channel Orange‘ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Getting in and out of the car with the halo takes a bit of experience. I struggled initially, but after a few trial runs I was fine.

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

I’ll never make it, it will never happen, because they’re never going to hear me ‚cause they’re screaming all the time.

I struggled with being a broke college graduate, and while all my friends were getting career jobs, I was working horrible part-time jobs. That’s why now, even when I get tired, I think, ‚This is what I asked for.‘

The work is the work. The work is not me.