Quotes About Persistence

If,' Roland said. 'An old teacher of mine used to call it the only word a thousand letters long.

You're dead, George. You just don't have the sense to lie down.

Time and tide wait for no man.

That's clear about the end of my other life, how I kept saying 'I can do this' even when I knew I couldn't, even when I knew I was fucked, I was dead ass fucked in the pouring rain.

When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.

You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.

Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon. or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up.

No great thing is created suddenly.

The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.

What Jack didn't understand was that no matter where he went, the same asshole got off the plane.

She thought that things could not get worse . . . but they always can, and often do.

If you were seeing a lot of horseshit, there had to be a pony in the vicinity.

I know I can do it, Todd Downey said, helping himself to another ear of corn from the steaming bowl. I'm sure that in time her death will be a mystery, even to me.

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

Confucius say if man want to grow one row of corn, first must shovel one ton of shit.

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising. [ The Writer's Digest Interview: Stephen King & Jerry B. Jenkins (Jessica Strawser, Writer's Digest , May/June 2009)]

I hold to no God, Roland said. I hold to the Tower, and won't pray to that.

Nothing is ever lost, Sarah. Nothing that can't be found.

I do have one slightly crooked wheel upstairs, but everything else is ticking along just four-o, thank you very much.

No bounce, no play.

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.