Quotes About Persistence

The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day... and rightly so.

That's such a thrill - a story I wrote at the beginning of my career, and it's still packin' the house.

I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

Wrought upon at length, you may say, by an enthusiasm and frenzy that could brook no control - I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe, and clandestinely, or by stealth, grasped an opportunity, which custom and the world seemed to deny, as a natural privilege.

I had been struggling to get roles in Hollywood for three and a half years after leaving the WWE. Then I finally got an agent - the agent I have now. He's a great guy, but he turned me down three times before he even decided to take me on a as a client.

Patience is key. You can't get selfish, and that's the number one thing I've learned at WWE. The world continues to go round, and I just knew - given the right opportunity and the right moment - that the world would know I was good, but now the world knows that I'm great.

It's said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In that case, the WWE 'creative' team must be as crazy as a rainbow trout in a car wash.

I was three times AAU All-American World Champion and I had rough time. I was broke, no money and everything was bad for me until WWE.

I feel like everything in WWE I earn the hard way.

It took me 11 years to get a shot at the WWE championship; not just to win it, but just to get a shot, but luckily I was able to capitalize on that and become WWE champion, but if I had quit I wouldn't have been in that position.

For a long time when I was working to get a job and in OVW to create an image to get hired by WWE, they kept saying, 'we're looking for the next Trish Stratus. We want that look - that beautiful, feminine fitness model that kicks butt, and you just don't fit the mold.' That was holding me back for so long.

All my life I wanted to be WWE champion, so when I won that, that was great.

I have dreamed of being a champion in WWE, and there's nothing I won't do, no length I won't go to, in order to keep it that way.

If I aspire to be the king of WWE, one day if I keep working at it, I will be the king of WWE.

WWE, in the back of my mind, was always the dream job, and most people don't get their dream jobs.

Doing these movies I've done with WWE, it's a different pace. It's a lot of hurry up and wait, a lot of sitting around and like the day of the pay-per-view, when you're thinking about what you can do, and then you get the payoff, the reward, that night. It's just a different animal.

If my parents didn't come to Canada in the '70s, I probably wouldn't be living my dream to be a WWE superstar.

When I came into WWE after Monday Night Wars, it wasn't my greatest time in the business... but they kept bringing me back.

No man can knock me out. I've been hitting my head with steel chairs in the WWE. I've never been knocked out in my life. And nobody can knock me out.

I remember the first time I stepped into a WWE ring, and I got critiqued, and I was told I'd be gone in three months. Here I sit ten years later, and I'm the Intercontinental champion.

I would be up until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning on nights I was facing a wall. Because when I walked into WWE, I was told I was going to be fired ten times because I'm the smallest guy around.