Quotes About Ambition

All we women have are our dreams—so of course we are dreamers.

I stare out of the window and reflect on the similarity between writing and saving a life and the inevitable failure of one's imagination and one's goals and ambitions to create a character or a life worth saving. In life as in writing as in any type of creation that sets off to be a success, knowable and inspiring.

Everything in life, except her kids, made her impatient. She had tried to do a million things. She'd wanted to be a documentary filmmaker and then a painter and then a tiny-ceramic-figure maker. None of it panned out. She'd be full of enthusiasm at first, full of big ideas and energy and drive, but it would all gradually evaporate and disappear. She could never maintain the momentum or the concentration or the confidence she needed to get anything done.

Having more does not keep you from wanting more.

Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.

All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.

Much of what we called depression was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.

Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.

What's wrong with being number 2?

I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.

Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.

If you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more.

The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate who left campus that day headed for New York city, ready to offer the world his talent. The world, I discovered. was not all that interested.

He did not know that the child who had asked for yesterday was now seeking to own tomorrow.

The only thing scarier than leaving a small town is never leaving it at all.

If you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are

intentions. That's important in music, too. Critically important. What you're thinking about can be what you become.

That's who I want to be when I grow up.

I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck

If you really want it, then you'll make your dream happen.

I earned a mater's degree in journalism and took the first job offered, as a sports writer. Instead of chasing my own fame, I wrote about famous athletes chasing theirs.

The eighties happened. The nineties happened. Death and sickness and getting fat and going bald happened. I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.

Wanting what you can't have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren't satisfied -- before working some more.

What you're thinking about can be what you become.