Grit Quotes - Page 4

• There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.

  Neil Gaiman

  Pain, Loss, Unique

  4 Copy quote

• This is your heritage,' he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of tenement buildings in Spanish Harlem, and projects in Red Hook, and dance halls, and city parks, and about how his own Paps, how he had beat him, how he taught him to dance, as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge and raising it to drink, his head back, still dancing, still steeping and snapping perfectly in time.

  Justin Torres

  Beer, Men, Cities

  9 Copy quote

• I mean I know it's cold out here and not everybody has a sleeping bag. But when you grit your teeth and stick it out until dawn!

  Suzanne Collins

  Mean, Sleep, Dawn

  Suzanne Collins (2009). “The Hunger Games”, p.153, Scholastic Inc.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more then the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes.

  Martin Amis

  Rain, Eye, Climbing

  Martin Amis (2010). “Money”, p.72, Random House

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.

  Alice Walker

  Men, Air, White Man

  Alice Walker (1982). “El color púrpura”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

  Jim Harrison

  Love, Disappointment, Tired

  14 Copy quote

• Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up the flowers, wind, water, a big rock.

  Alice Walker

  Flower, Men, Thinking

  Alice Walker (2012). “Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism”, p.31, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Country, Character, Fear And Loathing

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time”, p.535, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Last year when "Black Swan," "True Grit" and "King's Speech" all grossed over $100 million, it gave studios and independent financiers the confidence to make daring movies. You know, and not do the same old you-know-what.

  Harvey Weinstein

  Kings, Independent, Swans

  "Harvey Weinstein On Hollywood's Heated Oscar Race". "Morning Edition" with Renee Montagne, www.npr.org. December 2, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Winter in the country is very white. There is black grit on all the shoulders of the roads and on the big mounds from the plows, and all the cars are filthy, but the fields are dazzling and untouched and pristine.

  Susan Orlean

  Country, Winter, White

  "Drifting" by Susan Orlean, www.newyorker.com. January 31, 2011.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother's Day. I didn't want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Gratitude, Flower

  7 Copy quote

• I deeply appreciate the people of Michigan. I love their grit. I love the way they face life. I love the family values they have.

  Ernie Harwell

  People, Appreciate, Michigan

  5 Copy quote

• I can't think of anyone I admire who isn't fuelled by self-doubt. It's an essential ingredient. It's the grit in the oyster.

  Richard Eyre

  Thinking, Self, Oysters

  "A life in theatre: Richard Eyre" by Andrew Dickson, www.theguardian.com. November 29, 2010.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry. If they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere and keep on working until the work is done... I bet there isn't a single highly successful person who has not depended on grit. Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that's what grit allows you to do.

  Jonah Lehrer

  Success, Hard Work, Writing

  12 Copy quote

• The world is eaten up by boredom. You can't see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands.

  Georges Bernanos

  Dust, Hands, Bores You

  Georges Bernanos, Rémy Rougeau (2002). “The Diary of a Country Priest”, p.2, Da Capo Press

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Can you rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?

  Anna Funder

  Past, Pearls, Smooth

  Anna Funder (2011). “Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall”, p.162, Granta Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm learning to say 'y'all' and, I like grits... Strange things are happening to me.

  Mitt Romney

  Awkward, Strange, Happenings

  "'Let Mitt Be Mitt': But Who Was He?". "Morning Edition" with Ari Shapiro, www.npr.org. November 9, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In order to obtain the goal of returning to Palestine, all of us sometimes have to grit our teeth. But it is forbidden that this harm the continued struggle against the Zionist enemy. Cooperation and understanding between the P.L.O. and the rejectionist organizations is what will lead to the speedy retreat of Israel from the occupied territories in the first stage, until the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem. Only a state like that can then continue the struggle to remove the enemy from all Palestinian lands.

  Yasser Arafat

  Struggle, Israel, Order

  50 Copy quote

• The Center for Public Integrity is the real thing. A group of dedicated people who remember that great journalism is about grit and guts and stamina and razor-sharp instincts. They are, thank heaven, here to stay.

  Diane Sawyer

  Integrity, Real, People

  5 Copy quote

• Let's see, for breakfast Rickey will have bacon and eggs, and grits if I can get 'em.

  Rickey Henderson

  Eggs, Ems, Breakfast

  4 Copy quote

• Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit.

  S.M. Stirling

  Pearls, Sometimes, Unlikely

  S. M. Stirling (2012). “Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change”, p.23, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there is a little sand in the sugar of home happiness, it really seems better to concentrate on the sweetness that remains than to carry around samples of the grit in envelopes of conversational confidence.

  William George Jordan

  Home, Littles, Sugar

  8 Copy quote

• When business is not all that it should be there is a temptation to sit back and say, Well, what's the use! We've done everything possible to stir up a little business and there is nothing doing so what's the use of trying! There is always a way. There was a way in and there is a way out. And success comes to the man who grits his teeth, squares his jaw, and says, There is a way for me and, by jingo, I'll find it. The stagnator gathers green scum, finally dries up and leaves an unsightly hollow.

  Cliff Sloan

  Perseverance, Men, Squares

  12 Copy quote

• Machine guns are taken through grit and determination.

  Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

  Determination, Taken, Gun

  12 Copy quote

• Confronted with the unhappy facts of exclusion, we sometimes reassure ourselves by telling stories: the poor boys who made it, theblacks who became a "credit to their race," the women elected to high office, the handicapped who made "useful contributions" to our society.... Just as we believe in the self-sufficient family, we also believe that any child with enough grit and ability can escape poverty and make a rewarding life. But these stories and beliefs clearly reflect the exceptions.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Believe, Boys

  Kenneth Keniston (1977). “All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure”, Harcourt on Demand

  7 Copy quote

  Show source