Quotes About Persistence

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

If you want to be a singer, you've got to concentrate on it twenty-four hours a day. You can't be a well driller, too. You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Depending on what happens with my directing career, I don't think I'll stop writing, even if I crash and burn in movies and TV. I'll go back to plays. Even if I crash and burn there, I'll write a novel. That's the great thing about writing is that you don't have to wait for people to give you permission to do it.

She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.

After all, a book can be set aside for weeks, or for good. (Burned in the grate.) Alternatively, a story can be adored for centuries. But it cannot be derailed. A plot, whether abandoned by a reader or pursued rapturously, remains itself, and gets where it is headed even if nobody is looking. It is progressive and inevitable as the seasons. Winter still comes after autumn though you may have died over the summer.

He had no other plans for the rest of his life. He followed her.

There was no apology for the way the world worked. Only accommodation to it, while at the same time committing—somehow—not to give up.

They hadn't come so far just to be turned away because of adolescent radicalism.

Y allí se quedó la vieja y malvada Bruja, durante mucho, muchísimo tiempo. —¿Ha salido alguna vez? —Todavía no.

bent ostentatiously to her work.

Regret could disguise itself in a thousand veils, you could perish before having the strength to drag the last one away.

Well, I might be all or none of the things you say, said Boq staunchly, but you will learn that I am persistent. I will not let you say no to our friendship, Galinda. It means too much to me. Behold the male beast roaring in the jungle for his mate, said Elphaba. See how the female beast giggles behind a shrub while she organizes her face to say, Pardon dear, did you say something?

Life is a challenge, Laura Maria Ciardi, You have to meet it.

The tedious never die; that's what makes them tedious.

The world was a set of alternations, resistance and persistence, writ up in lake and the distant Alpine peaks of eastern Switzerland. In fact, the world was no easier to understand than Bach.

Grenville Kleiser

Those who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered while others gave up in despair, have practiced the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result, they enjoy in later life the success so often erroneously attributed to good luck.

Those who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered while others gave up in despair, have practiced the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose.

How about this," I suggested. "Instead of feeling that you've blown the day and thinking, 'I'll get back on track tomorrow,' try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

What I do most days matters more than what I do once in a while." That kind of self-encouragement is a greater safeguard than self-blame.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld advised aspiring comedian Brad Isaac that, because daily writing was the key to writing better jokes, Isaac should buy a calendar with a box for every day of the year, and every day, after writing, cross off the day with a big red X. "After a few days you'll have a chain," Seinfeld explained. "You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly.

By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished. We tend to overestimate how much we can accomplish in an hour or a week and underestimate how much we can accomplish in a month or a year, by doing just a little bit each day.