Lauren Oliver Quotes

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.

Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.

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 hurts, but that’s all it does. The most difficult part of the training is training your mind. You build calluses on your feet to endure the road. You build calluses on your mind to endure the pain. There’s only one way to do that. You have to get out there and run.

You're never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take.

Just keep going - no feeling is final.

We all survive more than we think we can.

I have the strength to endure it all.

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive.

You've got keep your head up, keep fighting, and do the best you can.

I suppose I always find a lot of characters that are deeply, deeply keening with a sense of yearning and desire through sadness, but they have a bravery that keeps them going despite that.

There's nothing more powerful than to consider why you're running, no matter what pain you're going through during the race, if you know why you're running, then it'll be more satisfying at the end.

I don't think getting punched in the face is too fun. I keep going because this is what I am. Every time I fight, this is why we live. We have to feel this. That's how we become stronger. That's how we become champions.

The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.

Discipline is something we despise for the moment.... We all look for a place to run, an excuse with which to stall. No one enjoys it. Yet those of us who have endured it know that the fruit it produces and the pain from which it ultimately spares us makes it worth the agony.

What fortitude the Soul contains, That it can so endure The accent of a coming Foot- The opening of a Door.

You have to stay strong when it gets tough.

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.

If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.

Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start back in the hills with 6 miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing. Guts begin when you still have forty minutes of torture left and you're already hurting more than you ever remember.

Will that light come again, As now these tears come...falling hot and real!

Don't let a kick in the ass stop you. It's how you cope that says what you are.

Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?

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.