Quotes About Ambition

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that.

Haven't you enough money?' For she knew that this is what is the matter with nearly everybody over twenty-five.

A pioneer of tomorrow whose only challenge now is to remain humble.

And he wanted to march right in there and do it again.

Because it's there. -George Mallory, one of the first climbers to attempt Everest, when asked why he wanted to climb it. (He disappeared into a cloud near the summit in 1924, where his body was found in 1999.)

My heart weighs heavy from all of the books I have not yet written

New York in the 1880's was already a city that seemed to have made up its mind that whatever existed was dispensable and replaceable, provided some more profitable use could be found for it.

I have decided that maybe I want to write when I grow up. I just don't know what I would write.

I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure that she has a better life than you do.

I've been trying hard to not be a loser.

Mais même si on ne peut pas choisir d'où on vient, à partir de là, on peut quand même choisir où on veut aller.

And what my brother's face will look like on a football card, or what it will look like if it is never on a football card.

Ohio has produced 23 astronauts. Tell me, what is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?

It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.

XXVI There was set before me a mighty hill, And long days I climbed Through regions of snow. When I had before me the summit-view, It seemed my labor Had been to see gardens Lying at impossible distances.

A man saw a ball of gold in the sky; He climbed for it, And eventually he achieved it -- It was clay. Now this is the strange part: When the man went to the earth And looked again, Lo, there was the ball of gold. Now this is the strange part: It was a ball of gold. Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.

Many workmen Built a huge ball of masonry Upon a mountain-top. Then they went to the valley below, And turned to behold their work. It is grand, they said; They loved the thing. Of a sudden, it moved: It came upon them swiftly; It crushed them all to blood. But some had opportunity to squeal.

I SAW A MAN PURSUING THE HORIZON; ROUND AND ROUND THEY SPED. I WAS DISTURBED AT THIS; I ACCOSTED THE MAN. IT IS FUTILE, I SAID, YOU CAN NEVER— YOU LIE, HE CRIED, AND RAN ON.

Golden Boy with feet of clay Let me help you on your way A proper push will take you far - But what a clumsy lad you are!

Leigh Freeman moved his printing press to Laramie and set about publishing the Frontier Index there. In its first issue, May 5 [1868], the paper predicted that Laramie would soon rival Chicago. When it was only two weeks old, the Index boasted, "Laramie already contains a population of two thousand inhabitants.

Birth of a Railroad

McGovern had other problems as well, personal ones with his

As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.

I said it before and I'll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there's only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I'd be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don't write movies. You make movies.