Quotes About Persistence

The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, 'Casino Royale' dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.

I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling... I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt like it or not. I just did it.

I'm no relation to Lillian or Dorothy Gish. Not even way back. But when I first became interested in acting, I wrote a letter to Lillian Gish. She wrote back, discouraging me from entering the business.

The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word.

I didn't pretend that I was good at writing music, so I wrote terrible music, intentionally. As time went on, the terrible subsided, and I started getting good.

I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

I wrote for years before I was ever published, and I don't think I could ever stop. That said, I was also a veterinarian before I sold my first book, and I still volunteer my time to help with animal welfare causes. So that is a career I would be happy to return to - while still secretly writing strange stories back in my doctor's office.

I always felt great about what I wrote for 'Newsies,' but 'Newsies' was a total flop.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

I wrote a few unsuccessful screenplays before I wrote 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.' I wrote them as television plays that never got made. I'm glad I wrote them - I think it was a good experience.

I wrote for 10 years before I even started the 'Percy Jackson' series.

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is - and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn't even give me her telephone number - and she wrote in her diary: 'A funny little man asked me to marry him.'

I'm not successful in Hollywood, and I probably would never be. I think Hollywood has such an interesting model for success, and it creates those successful people. I'm not in that chosen category, but what is successful for me is that, in spite of that, I've been able to work and do the things that I wrote down that I wanted to do and be.

At 31, I decided to learn how to read and, at 32, read my first book: Lee Iacocca's autobiography. Ten years later, with my friend Larry 'Smokey' Genta, I wrote my first book, which was my proudest accomplishment.

You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process.

Growing up, I would watch a movie on video and would go to the back of the VHS and locate the address for Universal Pictures or MGM or whatever. I'd write to the studios asking them if I could be in a movie. They never wrote me back.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

In the first year, 1988, I wrote and sold 3 novels.

And it was out in the theaters in two weeks. This is not, 'We're going to develop twenty-five and maybe one's going to get made,' so the first three things I wrote got up on the screen and, good, bad or indifferent, I got to see them on their feet.