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“You can talk about fitness but the element people forget about and which has to come first is tenacity. You need that attitude and determination to commit to what you’re doing. It’s not always easy. That tenacity serves you well in races too. I do overload effort in training so when I get to races it all feels easier. I know if I am in pain others will be in pain too.”

Lizzie Deignan (1988) English track and road racing cyclist

"Lizzie Deignan: 10 ways to become a better cyclist this summer" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/lizzie-deignan-10-ways-become-better-cyclist-summer/, The Telegraph (30 June 2017).

“Five years ago I spent two and a half months in Berlin, and every day I visited the museum to have at least a brief look at this divine masterpiece [a portrait of the soldier of fortune, Alessandro del Borro, then attributed to Diego Velazquez, and later to an unknown master], and every day my soul sang in response to it stronger and stronger. I was very sick then, and that genius alone reconciled me to my life when there was so much suffering in it. Looking at his creation, at these lines, at these half-tones (remember that shadowed jaw against the background or the column against the dress), at all this charm of the art, at this grand style, I started to want to live again, to see it again and again, to live on by painting and perhaps by painting alone.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote in Werefkin's Letter to Igor Grabar on August 10, 1895; Department of Manuscripts of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Fund 106. Item 3242
1895 - 1905

“As I look at American history, I see that this has always been a country of “we” not “me.” We stand together because we are stronger together.. One — out of many, one — has seen us through the darkest chapters of our history. Ever since 13 squabbling colonies put aside their disagreements and united because they realized they were going to rise together or fall separately, generation after generation has fought and marched and organized to widen the circle of dignity and opportunity. Ending slavery. Securing and expanding the right to vote. Throwing open the doors of education. Building the greatest middle class the world has ever seen. And we are stronger when more people can participate in our democracy.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

“She had opened a door… and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge… Pain had made a sadist of her.”

Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart

Source: The Hellbound Heart

“That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

“He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels — the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

“She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness, yet they could let each other see it without the need of protection.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“He said “woman” in the same way I’d say “Mmmmm, yummy chocolate” after waking up from hunger pains and finding a Hershey bar in an empty refrigerator.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“There are some pains that run too deep for anything to absolve them. The best we can do is pick up the pieces and hope for the strength we need to keep going.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“Falling into ruin was a bit like falling in love: Both descents stripped you bare and left you as you were at your core. And both endings are equally painful.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying “Why?”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

“I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends.”

Jenna Blum book Het familieportret

Source: Those Who Save Us

“Too many of us take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“you can't deny they ever happened. You can't deny you ever loved them, love them still, even if loving them causes you pain”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

“It was the heaviest thing I'd ever felt, as if I were being crushed under a thousand trucks. I wanted to black out from the pain, but I breathed deeply.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“Everyone cries sometimes, Tory. There are some pains that run too deep for even the strongest to take without breaking. I don’t think any less of you for it. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron