Quotes About Determination

I was an expert skier who set his sights on going to the 1988 Olympics in Canada to represent Britain, and went from novice ramps to the 120-metre jump in five months. That's possible only with utter focus.

When people start talking to me about slow play and how I'm killing the game, I'm doing this and that to the game, that is complete and utter you-know-what.

Certainly, grades only matter so much when you're in Hollywood. But I became an utterly motivated, devoted, committed student. I was a good student because I was convinced that it would somehow help me in my quest to become a filmmaker.

It's one thing to fail with something you utterly believe in, but to fail with something you don't believe in? You just feel so sordid.

I am utterly ambitious. I'm ambitious for the sake of being so, too.

From the age of 6 to 33, I was utterly driven and single-minded.

I've chronicled a time when I was 17, 18, utterly terrified that you're not gonna get anywhere with whatever you want to do. It's that fear and claustrophobia that I think comes to most people living in small towns. But I am lucky, because I just knew that music was my thing.

I need a vacation anyway. They fight me too much. I'm not going to be the one to back out of these fights.

I don't need the water to be inspired. My stories inspire me, not the location of where I'm parked. And good thing, since I've had to finish books in airports, in the RV we used to have, the lake house, while on vacation, at home, in the kitchen when my office PC was on the fritz.

In 1991, I didn't have $2,000 to go on vacation.

I don't take vacations. I don't get sick. I don't observe major holidays. I'm a jackhammer.

With 'Interpreter,' I didn't know it was ever going to be a book, that they were going to be published. I was writing them in a vacuum for the most part. They were my apprentice work. Then the stories happened to become a book.

I could make records at home in a vacuum, but that is not the situation. I'm just taking it one phase at a time.

One of the reasons I'm proud of the show and think it works is that as much as Ted is nice and he's kind and he's passionate, his troubles are real. He doesn't exist in a vacuum. The world of 'Ted Lasso' isn't a fairy tale.

I could've easily let the passing of my brother control how I live my life. But I was determined not to let him die in vain and to make a negative into a positive.

For all the failures of naval, air and army defense, the men who died at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines would not die in vain.

Being told you're too small and never going to make it is an opinion. And it's a valid opinion, and it's something you take in your stride.

If you feel you have a film that's valid, you stick your ass on the line.

A football match should never be settled with the horror of penalties. I don't see that as a valid result. For me, there has to be another way.

When I was 13, I told Henry Winkler I wanted to act. He said, Do it and don't let anyone stand in your way. His validation just made it all the more true. I haven't stopped thanking him since.

There's obviously some validity to it. But I think it also points out that you obviously can do it on your own because people have been doing it long before they had the stuff.

I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

I had this attitude, that Silicon Valley obnoxious attitude, that I know what I'm doing, and the rest was going to be pretty easy.

In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you'll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet.