How to use "trying" in a sentence

1.00 pm I've spent four hours trying to lift the boulder, but nothing has worked.

None of the answers she gave worked but she kept trying

I continue, trying to forget the pain in my left hand

Ned Land had his harpoon with him, but he was very busy trying to collect as many oysters as he could.

He answered angrily, 'Can't you see? I'm trying to sleep.'

'I've spent five years in prison for violent robbery, another fourteen years for trying to escape four times

Out of work, and with no food in the house, he had been arrested for trying to steal a loaf of bread

He stared at the coin with a look of puzzlement, as if he were trying to remember something

As she was wandering around the town, desperately trying to decide what to do, she noticed a crowd of people in the market square

While the policeman was trying to drag her to her feet, however, a voice from the shadows said, 'One moment please.'

Madeleine was in the police station, trying to save Fantine from prison

Champmathieu, a large, simple-minded man, denied everything when his chance came to speak, but the crowd thought he was trying to be funny

The desk clerk showed him into the police chief's office, where a tall man with a wide face and a thin, tight mouth was trying to keep warm next to a tire.

She bit her lip and hesitated, as if trying to make up her mind about something

The second killed a deaf old woman who was trying to shut her window.

It's no use trying to move me, but I'll tell you how you can treat my wound better than any doctor

He went out into the night and sat on the doorstep, his heart filled with a terrible hatred for the man who was trying to steal Cosette from him

On the other side was the low barricade, behind which hundreds of soldiers waited for rebels trying to escape

Then, moving to the gate, he shook it fiercely with both hands, trying to bend the bars with the last of his strength

The stranger narrowed his eyes, trying to hide his disappointment and anger at Marius's calmness

If there is someone in the next room trying to steal your new computer

As he lies there shouting and screaming and trying to pull the pieces of shot from his skin, he looks up at the beautiful blue sky and green trees and magnificent forest.

Sala frowned, trying to imagine it.

I've been trying to send a message for many years, but nothing has crossed the boundary successfully

"Yes, your grandmother's brother has been trying to contact her for a long time

People who still have relations on the other side, and who might risk trying to leave."

They're trying to break down the force field and maybe help some people escape."

They've discovered that the contamination is all a lie and they're trying to find ways through the force field!"

Sala walked in circles around the tiny Real Space, trying to think of a way forward.

There was one last Ultranet Talk Hour with Cham before the end of the month, but Sala decided it wasn't even worth trying to talk to him about leaving

Sala couldn't imagine anything worse in the whole world than someone trying to harm Gran, Mom, or Apat.

When you know what they're trying to do, you're one step ahead; you've won half the battle already

I sat down awkwardly trying not to look at him

I looked at it, trying to read the title.

I leant back in my chair, drinking my tea and trying to feel at home

'I lost my way,' I said, 'I was trying to find my room.'

What was Maxim trying to tell me?

'What are you trying to tell me? Captain Searle told me about the boat

'But what are they trying to find out?'

Whoever it was, he wanted to rub her face in the tragedy that she was trying so hard to forget.

Didn't he realize that her grief was as difficult to bear as his? What was he trying to prove?

She stood indecisively in the center of the small kitchen, trying to find the willpower to go to Danny's room and box his clothes, as she had planned

They made pleasant small talk for the next fifteen minutes, and none of it had to do with Magyck! Tina was aware that they were trying to take her mind off the show, and she appreciated their effort.

"I'm trying to charm you."

She did some deep-breathing exercises, trying to calm herself.

He was trying so hard to be nice, which wasn't like Michael at all

"I think they were just trying to upset me, scare me."

He was trying desperately to deflect her and change the course of the argument

She scanned the list of VIP customers who hadn't attended the opening of Magyck! Using a red pencil, she circled those names that were followed by anniversary dates, trying to ascertain how large a promotion she was proposing

She had nothing to lose by trying to follow the data chain

"I'm just trying to think how best to phrase what's on my mind

She hesitated, trying to hear how it was going to sound before she said it, wondering if she really believed it enough even to give voice to it

Maybe that someone is trying to tell me that Danny is alive

Maybe someone's just dropping a series of hints, trying to wake me up to the fact that Danny isn't dead."

If Danny were alive, and if someone were trying to get that news to you, it wouldn't be done like this, not with all these dramatic hints

He'd been trying to postpone her departure because he was afraid that he would never see her again after she drove off.

Unsuccessfully trying to shrug off the grim premonition, he went into the house.

In the process of trying to hurt his ex-wife, he'd waste several days of the court's time, and the end result would be exactly the same as if he'd never been given a chance to protest."

They appeared to be genuinely surprised by this news, and Elliot was pretty sure they weren't the people who had been trying to scare Tina

We've lost some pressure in our lines, and we're trying to find the cause of it

But we're trying to check every house

Even if the government had established a secret police force, however, why was it so anxious to cover up the true facts of Danny's death? What were they trying to hide about the Sierra tragedy? What really had happened up in those mountains?

She had paged through only two of the magazines Danny had bought, the first two, when she had been trying to make up her mind whether such unusual reading material could have any harmful effects on him

At first, she half believed that he was trying to be funny, playing a game to amuse her, and she was going to tell him that none of this struck her as funny

He wheeled around another corner, and then another, trying to disappear from the men in the van long enough to leave them with so many choices of streets to follow that they would have to give up the chase in confusion

"Remember maybe ten years ago when that Texas elections official revealed how Lyndon Johnson's first local election was fixed? The guy said he was just trying to clear his conscience after all those years

Regulations on banks and real estate agents and on everyone else - except casino owners - are less troublesome here than in other states, which takes a burden off everybody, but which is especially attractive to people trying to spend and invest dirty cash

"I'm still trying to figure that one

"Now," Tina said, "just like Death tried to stop the parents in the story, someone's trying to stop me from opening my son's grave."

At last, he and Tina went into the diner, trying not to look over their shoulders.

Killing all those people and trying to fake an accident - that was a whole lot riskier than letting the kids come back with their half-baked stories about seeing something peculiar in the mountains."

As the white-haired cashier grasped the plug in his arthritis-gnarled hands and wiggled it back and forth in the wall socket, trying to free it, Tina almost told him to stop

Danny was trying to reassure me, trying to tell me that he was still alive

He has some power, and he's reaching out, trying to tell me he's alive, asking me to find him and save him

"If fear and stress could increase the power of his psychic gifts, why didn't he start trying to get in touch with you months ago?"

Danny's alive, being held somewhere, and he's trying to reach me with his mind

That's another way Danny's been trying to reach me

"Stop trying to herd the facts into neat corrals of logic."

If they found Danny and then perished trying to save him, that would be a nasty trick of fate, for sure

"But that's what I've been trying to tell you," Kennebeck said, pushing a lock of snow-white hair back from his forehead

"That's what I've been trying to tell you

Although he was struggling to cast off the seizure of claustrophobia that had gripped him, was trying to pretend that the organic-looking ceiling wasn't pressing low over his head and that only open sky hung above him instead of thousands of tons of concrete and steel rock, his own panic attack concerned him less than what was happening beyond the viewport.

"I'm just trying to be conscientious," Zachariah said, almost pouting

Elliot strained his eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of movement beyond the rectangles of glass, but he saw nothing suspicious.

The poor man's blue-lipped mouth hung in a permanent gape, as if he were trying to deny all of the accusations of suicide that were to come.

Crouching low, trying to make as small a target of himself as possible, Elliot ran to where he had seen the snow move

"Listen, if I could get my hands on the people who're trying to keep us from finding Danny, I wouldn't have any compunctions about killing them

"It exists, and that's where he is," she said, trying to sound more certain than she actually was.

"Just trying to be helpful, love

"He's trying to figure out who the devil we are," Elliot said

"But trying to take the chopper in there at night..

"Well," Tina said, unsuccessfully trying to conceal her own anxiety, "we didn't need the snowshoes after all."

"But we're sure going to have fun trying!"

He was trying hard not to think about the chopper, the bad weather, and the likelihood that they would take a long, swift, hard fall into a remote mountain ravine.

He thrust it between two of the side rails, and he opened his small weak hand beseechingly, reaching for love, trying desperately to touch her.

For almost two months, they've been reinfecting his body over and over again, letting the virus wear him down, trying to discover how many times he can lick it before it finally licks him

We immediately began working with him, trying to engineer an exact duplicate of the virus

She may be trying to protect him

Feeling more and more like Commissaire Charas, but trying to look unconcerned, I went on:

'Andre, there is no fly here,' I said, trying to speak calmly

Seeing, but trying not to look, I ran forward and put the right arm under the hammer

'But when I'm trying things just get worse

I had been trying to speak

But he also looked as though he was trying to hide it.

'Of course, you were upset,' said Melchett, trying not to smile.

Someone's trying to make him look guilty.'

Perhaps he suspected her of the crime and was trying to protect her

I've been trying to protect Mrs Lestrange from anything that might upset her

He did this to make it seem that someone was trying to make Mrs Protheroe look guilty

I saw a young man - I believe he was a shop assistant in Woking - standing on the cylinder and trying to climb out of the pit again

'Are you trying to hide?' I asked.

I'm trying to rejoin my company

Soon everybody would be trying to escape to the north

After trying unsuccessfully to get onto a train at Chalk Farm my brother came out into the road, pushed through the hurrying lines of vehicles, and had the luck to be at the front of a crowd which was taking bicycles from a shop

He heard their screams and, hurrying round the corner, saw a couple of men trying to pull them out of the little cart which they had been driving, while a third held onto the frightened horse's head

After trying and failing to keep him quiet, I kept away from him in other rooms in the house.

As I watched the Martians, they seemed to be trying to raise themselves on the hands, but with their increased weight on Earth this was impossible

Instead of staying close and trying to move me away from the pit, the curate had gone back into the hall

I sat staring in front of me, trying without success to find a way of arguing against him

I was trying to get my shirt out of the river