Quotes About Persistence

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.

Sometimes I flashback and say, 'Wow I'm still doing this. Wow, it's crazy.' And I'm very thankful, but I think my body needs a rest.

It's always irritated me that people say, 'Where's the action? Oh wow, there's no action here; let's go somewhere else.' These people will never find the action.

I started out in 1989 doing open mic nights. The first 10 years, I was literally all about I'm going to be a star. I want leather pants, I want a kangaroo, I want to be on 'MTV Cribs,' I want to go to the mall with a pet monkey and I want everyone to go, 'Wow, that guy's huge, he's successful.'

When I was in acting classes early on, there were so many people in these classes who were doing great work, and you'd just look at them and say, 'Wow, I hope to someday be like that.' And yet these people never worked. You never saw them.

'Dat $tick' was the first song I tried to be serious on. Then I thought, Wow, what if I really did this seriously? How dope would that be?'

I watching this Disney documentary, and I'm not Disney, but I was thinking about Mickey Mouse and he became an icon. Walt moved onto other things but he made him exist. I was thinking, 'Wow, is 'Samurai Jack' my 'Mickey Mouse?' Am I stupid to stop working on it?'

Well I knew JD could go out there and knock the guy out because in training I told JD all the time that he has height, reach and size and he has the power. JD has such a right hand, his right hand is like wow, oh man it is bad.

I started as a straight actor. I'd go onstage, and I'd think, 'Wow, this is the only thing I want to work really hard at. I will rehearse fifty times on a single scene; I don't care - I'll do it again.'

No matter what went down, music was always going to be a part of my life. What ultimately happened is that, over a period of time, I just kind of looked around and when like, 'Wow! I'm actually making a living doing this.'

Any standup that you see who you go, 'Oh, wow, that guy's, you know, that guy's making it.' Inevitably, they've been doing it 10, 12 years - 10, 15 years. Because it takes time.

Every first draft sucks, so when you have your favorite novel, and you're like, 'Wow, this is a masterpiece,' and then you write your first draft, and you're like, 'This is really bad,' and then you're like 'I can't do this because this is nowhere close.' When, in reality, the book you loved so much started out just as crappy.

It's a sense of pride, a sense of you set out to get a record deal, and we got that. We set out to get a No. 1 record, and then we got that. Then you say, 'Wow, that was impossible and now even more impossible is to stay No. 1 and stay current and put out new records that people care about,' and we really stuck to that.

Starting out, you're just doing it because you love it so much; that's what I remember about us. Looking back now, some of the things that seemed like big obstacles seem so small now - 'Wow, how will we get through this?' But we always did.

If I fight that fight that makes everybody go, 'Wow, he's unstoppable,' - that's all I can do.

We never work on only one project because we never know if we will get permission for a project. So, for 'Over the River,' we started in 1992. I was just finishing 'The Umbrellas' in Japan and California, and I was also working on getting permission to wrap the Reichstag.

You could make the most beautiful film, and that weekend it's raining too hard on the East Coast, and no one goes out. Artists should have a chance to do it again. That's the challenge: Women artists don't get a second chance. People-of-color artists don't get a second chance. You're put in director's jail, and that's a wrap.

You don't want to get too wrapped up in that final destination. You want to enjoy the journey, enjoy the process, and just take it one step at a time.

I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me.

I like the fact that in the theatre nothing is ever finished because you're going to do it all over again tomorrow, whereas in telly once it's wrapped and in the can, that's it.

In the past, even I have done shows that have wrapped up in three months.

Every time you wanted to do something, you'd hope it would score. You'd keep trying and trying, and all of the sudden, something would come right out of left field, like 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.' No one had any idea about that one.

I'm not going to just stop doing it because I got hurt once. People get hurt in car wrecks every day, and they don't stop driving the car the rest of their life to work. It's my passion. It's what I want to do with my life. It's a part of what I do.

I was a pizza delivery boy at the Pizza Oven in Canton. I wanted to get fired so bad, I actually wrecked the delivery car, but they wouldn't fire me because I was the only person they had working there.