Time & Perspective Quote by Norma McCorvey

The line carries the bracing voice of someone who has learned to keep moving or be swallowed by circumstance. Sadness is not denied so much as reframed as a luxury of time and stillness. By casting sorrow as an activity that requires sitting down, it suggests a life where idleness is costly and where survival depends on staying in motion. The cadence is practical, almost workmanlike, and its power comes from the refusal to romanticize pain.

Norma McCorvey knew what it meant to be consumed by other people’s timelines. As Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade, she became a symbol before she had power over her own narrative. The court case outlasted her pregnancy; her life was overtaken by legal schedules, cameras, and activists’ demands. Years later she crossed the aisle and became a pro-life advocate, then revealed late in life that she had been paid to make public appearances, throwing fuel on the debate over her motives and the exploitation of her image. Through addiction, poverty, religious conversions, and relentless scrutiny, her days were often dictated by others and by necessity rather than by the private pace of grief.

The statement can read as resilience, a strategy forged by class realities and chaos: when rent is due, when children need care, when phones keep ringing, sadness gets deferred. It is also a critique of an American ethic that elevates productivity over introspection, especially for women expected to absorb pain while keeping households and movements running. There is courage in refusing to be immobilized, but there is also a cost. Constant motion can anesthetize, turning unshed tears into a pressure that finds other outlets.

What makes the line resonate is its mixture of grit and vulnerability. It acknowledges pain without indulging it, naming a hard truth of precarious lives: sometimes agency begins not with healing, but with getting through the next task.