Quotes About Challenge

An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn't exist, for the artist doesn't live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren't doing.

If poverty were a man, I would have slain him.

I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. 'How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this?' A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?

Life wasn't easy growing up; it was frustrating. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily, everything would have come easily, and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.

I've had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

'There are no easy pickings.' That would be a more accurate, less dramatic statement than 'There's no such thing as a free lunch.'

The risk for me would be in not taking one - that's the only thing that's really risky for me.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.

I went to grad school because I wanted to learn the rules so I would know how to break them. Breaking the rules is saying, 'I'm breaking in, OK? I'm breaking in your very comfortable little house over here, and I'm going to take a room.'

So you wound up with Apollo. If he's sometimes hard to swallow. Use this.

'Lolita' was a great wound in the side for me. I stuck my neck out maybe further than I should have and castigated the studio for not getting behind it.

There's a lot of room for error with a wound in the rear. It's a wide target.

It stinks to play terrible and your team loses. It's like salt on the wound.

Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull.

You have to beat your opponent, otherwise you get to walk home with a black eye and wounded pride.

The Dawn Wall and the Fitz Traverse were super-satisfying climbs. But I will always be searching for the next thing - the need to accomplish and explore are just woven into the fabric of who I am.

I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough.

The distance, being far away from your home, from your family, that's not easy. There are times when you say, 'Wow, what a fight, what a battle.'

Hopefully with each thing that you do you're learning something, you're growing, and you're pushing yourself a little harder in some way or another. So I think you'd be in real trouble if each new thing that you create didn't feel like 'Oh, wow. I feel like I'm doing something a little different this time.'

Most of the time, I don't want to use anti-climatic, but sometimes you go out there thinking this is going to be the worst thing you've ever gotten yourself into, and then you get back to base and think, 'Wow, that wasn't anything like I expected.'

It's hard when you play something that people are like, 'Wow that's really cool - you just did something really epic,' because you're not always going to be playing epic characters in a role.

When you're young and you're striving, it's all uphill, and it's easier to climb. Then, when you get and look around, you sort of say, 'Wow, the altitude's kinda thin up here!'