Quotes About Challenge

His words were creating a bewildering maze of grammatically inappropriate junctures. It was the kind of maze where small, white mice died without ever finding the little lever.

Fate whispers to the wolf; "you cannot withstand the storm" and the wolf whispers back, "I am the storm.

I feel a sense of anticipation of going into a situation where I will be forced to take action and make decisions. Since my actions and decisions can affect or endanger the lives of others, that anticipation takes on a sense of urgency. To me, that is excitement.

The fact is, none of us really has a choice: We are all playing the money game whether we want to or not. The only question is: Are we winning?

What artist has not experienced the feverish euphoria of composing the perfect thumbnail sketch, first draft, negative or melody — only to run headlong into a stone wall trying to convert that tantalizing hint into the finished mural, novel, photograph, sonata. The artist's life is frustrating not because the passage is slow, but because he imagines it to be fast.

At any point along that path, your job as an artist is to push craft to its limits — without being trapped by it. The trap is perfection: unless your work continually generates new and unresolved issues, there's no reason for your next work to be any different from the last.

Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. — Gene Fowler

THOSE WHO WOULD MAKE ART might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit. It's a genuine tragedy. Worse yet, it's an unnecessary tragedy. After all, artists who continue and artists who quit share an immense field of common emotional

What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit. Each step in the artmaking process puts that issue to the test.

Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort.

Making art is difficult. We leave drawings unfinished and stories unwritten. We do work that does not feel like our own. We repeat ourselves. We stop before we have mastered our materials, or continue on long after their potential is exhausted. Often the work we have not done seems more real in our minds than the pieces we have completed. And so questions arise: How does art get done? Why, often, does it not get done? And what is the nature of the difficulties that stop so many who start?

As a footballer you always want to test yourself against the best.

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

I am quite happy to be branded a heretic because throughout history heretics have stood up against dogma based on bigotry.

They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

He lived the life he lived, like anybody, I guess, and he paid his dues, like everybody. Maybe what I mean when I say he made his life so hard was that he always tried to pay his dues in front.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

I still hankered to be back on the racecourse, but getting the funds for yet another assault on the ring was proving difficult. Could I track Sting down?

Messengers and mountain bikers share a common chromosome.

I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.

Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open.

What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.