Quotes About Persistence

Some friends of mine bothered me for a long time about getting on the social networking pages. They were close friends that I liked to mess with, and I think that I kind of enjoyed for a while that it bothered them so much. Now they've just kind of given up.

My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.

So I thought I should write five pages a day. And that's what I did. Eventually I had a book.

There are writers, and I know some of them, who are very disciplined. Who write, like, four pages a day, every day. And it doesn't matter if their dog got run over by a car that day, or they won the Irish sweepstakes. I'm not one of those writers.

In 'Dark Skye,' I rewrote every one of the Pandemonia scenes over and over before I was happy with them - hundreds of pages are now sitting in a folder called 'Cuttings,' never to be read. Ouch!

I actually tried to learn the dictionary at one point. It didn't work; I only got through the first few pages.

I want to keep continuously going through all the pages in the book of being an actor.

All I ever thought was, 'I'm going to do this as long as I can, and if I can't get paid at it, I'll be a bum doing it.' And so, here I am.

All I know is this: The reason that I've gotten attention from this industry is that I just kept making films until they paid attention.

Right now the thing that I have learned the most is to be grateful that I have finally gotten to a point where I am being paid to make films, after eight years.

I've been drawing since I was a little kid, but it's not something I love to do every day. If there's one thing I love to do every day, it'd probably be acting. I can act every day. I'd happily do it, you don't have to pay me. But that's one thing I'd love to do and get paid for.

Entrepreneurship is enduring pain for a long time without relinquishing.

I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.

It can get discouraging - 'Oh, it didn't work,' or, 'Oh, I lost the baby,' or, 'I can't do this again.' You can. And when you get the kid, you'll be happy that you did. But it's a very painful process for a lot of people. You just have to figure out how it's gonna get done.

It was painful, but I really wanted to get 'Hollow City' right, and I'm glad I put in the time because I'm really proud of it.

I wasn't accepted the first time I tried to get into drama school. I said, 'I'll give this one more shot... and if that doesn't work, I won't bang my head against this painful brick wall.'

There's nothing easy about building a company at all. I find it really hard, just painful and difficult, and if you are successful, it's even worse than if you fail.

We can all be geniuses because one definition of genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains.

If you were to say to me that I couldn't paint, I would write. If I couldn't write, I would be a set designer. As long as I'm creating something, I'm happy.

If you're an artist, you need to work. It doesn't matter how old you are, who you are. It doesn't matter if you're 12: if you draw, you draw. If you're 85 and you paint, you paint.

If I'm interrupted, it's just a minor inconvenience, but not a disaster, because it's easy to get back where I was: that is, the paint has not changed consistency; the light has not moved.

I hope I will be able to paint as long as I live.

When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

If I had to pick an artist that I look up to and am inspired by, it's Matisse because of how many times he would paint the same idea until he felt like he maybe got it right, and I try to do the same thing with my writing.