Quotes About Persistence

If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

I used to want to be a writer or a painter, although I couldn't paint very well.

About a year ago I got really exhausted from reading bad scripts and I know that I am a writer and that I have stories to tell, so I thought, 'Let's do this!' So I'm co-writing a screenplay now with another screenwriter and loving it. Absolutely loving it. And I would like to be the producer on the project and of course the lead is me.

As an actor, I give 60 days to act in a film, but the writer takes nearly two to three years to create a story.

Just play football. If you are a writer, you must write. It's the best way to practise. If I'm a pianist, I don't need to run in the forest for one hour or two hours to be a good pianist. I must play piano. So this is what we are doing all the time. Play football. Simple ideas.

Writers and musicians are very similar in that the chances of making a life in either field are so infinitesimal. And once you're in, the chances of staying viable are difficult. But there is something incredibly different about performing in front of a live audience, as opposed to sitting at your desk typing.

I think that if writers are tempted to do other things, they ought to go do other things. They should not write if they don't feel like it. I say this as a competitor. I am not interested in encouraging people who are in competition with me.

The writers that I aspire to, like Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, they'll tell you that the work gets harder, not easier. And they set that bar for us where we're always striving to do something better than the last time, whether it's the next song or just the next line.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn't bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

The reason actors, artists, writers have agents is because we'll do it for nothing. That's a basic fact - you gotta do it.

Many of the writers I admire - Melville, Dickinson, Kafka - were virtually invisible during their lifetimes. Art, I think, often has to dance around in the void.

Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: 'Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors.' Everyone knows this.

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

I got dumped off 'The Iron Lady' a month before they started shooting, and then they brought two new writers on. Then I was brought back on again. I'm just a bit of a rubber ball. I just bounce back.

You can write ten versions of a scene, and then, on the day, discover that something in the original scene worked. It's hard on writers. Hard on actors, hard on editors, hard on me, hard on the producers, who require patience and confidence. But I can't get to the end without going through this process.

I worked with several writers at the University of Michigan: Nicholas Delbanco, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack, Laura Kasischke, and Thomas Lynch, who told me the same thing over and over again: Persist. Read, write, and improve: tell your stories.

Advice to beginning SF writers? Write a lot, finish what you write, and when it's done, keep sending it out for quite awhile.

And I have to consider myself fortunate, because there are plenty of writers who spend most of a lifetime looking for that certain something without ever finding it.

The writers I respect the most had an undying commitment to a vision.

I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way.

I am not like Stephen King, who writes one book, then writes another. I finish a book and go off and... look for wrecks. Then, six months later, I might start another book.

Most actors are starving. Most of us are walking around with a flashlight and tweezers looking for evidence. When you have someone that actually writes an acting role, it's rare.

No one writes as slowly as I do, I'm convinced. It's so hard for me. I learn slowly; I make decisions at a snail's pace.