Quotes About Persistence

You need to learn a practical lesson. Grit alone is not going to save you from sinking.

I phoned this number and said, Please, sir, I want to be an actor.

I like to be busy. I once shared an agent with the late Sir John Gielgud, who, at 96, was apparently still ringing up, saying, 'Hello, Gielgud here, any work?' Good on him. We've got to keep working. If we retire, there'll be nobody to play the old wrinklies, and that would be a dreadful shame.

I had an awful first quarter but I picked it up. To all you single guys out there, it's not how you start the date, it's how you finish it sir. A lot of people can, you know, start the date with flowers and candy, but if you don't finish the date - you know what I mean?

My part had three lines. I said, 'You look wonderful, sir,' three times. All my friends said, 'Do not take that role - and do not understudy. You'll regret it the rest of your life.' I did both of those things, and I've never regretted it once.

When I started, there were no Indians on television or films, except for Sir Ben Kingsley. I was an actor in high school, college, and I played leads. And when I graduated, I knew that I couldn't go to Hollywood and audition for shows or films. I could try, but where was the evidence that it was going to happen?

Sometimes I just walk through; I just show up, as in The Other Sister.

All my graduation money went to paying for bartending classes so I could have a side gig. I bartended for two months before I was supposed to move to New York and then two months later I got the job as an understudy in 'Sister Act' and haven't looked back since.

I remember when I was like, 'I want to get another shot.' And some of the other actors on 'Sister, Sister' were like, 'Do you know that's like a 1%, 2% chance for you to get another successful show? That just doesn't happen.' But whenever I hear, 'No,' or 'You can't,' something inside of me just goes, 'Oh no, yes I can!'

When I finally finished writing 'Sisters,' I started getting hired for lots of rewrites.

My mom's parents were farmers, so every summer, my sisters and I would help out, hauling pipe and pulling maggots off the corn. We hated it, but it taught me the meaning of good hard work.

You can't sit around and do nothing, you have to carry on.

I'm not going to sit on my laurels.

I try to write three jokes every day. I don't sit down and write them, it's just things that pop into my head. Then I'll go watch it fail onstage that night.

The whole idea is you can't sit around and do nothing. You have to get up and start living one day at a time. That's what I did my entire career. You can't sit around and say, 'Oh, poor me. Nobody likes me. Nobody is giving me a job.' You have to get up and go. If you sit at home and do nothing, that is what is going to happen.

There are days when I'll write for 15 minutes and have to give up and move around, and I'll write another paragraph and give up again. On other days I get intensely - focused on the process, sit down at 8 A.M. and won't get up until 8 P.M.

When I'm not acting, I'm writing, building an inventory of scripts. Even if they sit on the shelf, I just keep stacking them up.

A lot of the time, you need to find the right home for ideas. You know, sometimes you think 'oh this'd be a sitcom, oh, no it wouldn't, it'd be a drama, or an educational thing, or a doco or something.' I've got loads of ideas and you just have to keep sending them and pitching them.

I had done the sitcom thing to lesser and lesser degrees of success.

Before 'Entourage,' I couldn't get a sitcom.

I got into stand-up to get on a sitcom.

I have tried many times to write a TV sitcom - with little success.

I can't write a sitcom.

I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.