Queenie

“Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.

It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.

Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“At moments when life is at its worst there are two things that you can
do: 1) break down, lose hope, and refuse to go on while lying facedown on the ground
banging your fists and kicking your legs, or 2) laugh.”
― Cecelia Ahern, A Place Called Here

“No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved.”
― Alice Sebold, Lucky

“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea