Quotes About Persistence

I've got to work harder and smarter to get to the place where I truly belong.

You may not be the best person in the room or the smartest or most experienced, but you can still control how hard you work on a project, and that's a quality that can really come through.

I'm never the smartest guy in the room. I'm willing to work harder than most people around me, come earlier, stay later.

Later, one of my first jobs was to feed the calves. It meant getting up before the crack of dawn and going to school stinking of manure - you can never shift the smell; it soaks your clothes and hair.

Advice from my experience, for me, I've never taken no as an answer, I don't believe in that. If I want something, I'm going to get it. When people tell me that I can't do something, it just motivates me more. For me, it makes me smile, because I just want to prove everybody wrong.

The final phone call that said we're going to be picked up again was just a miracle. We've overcome the impossible and we're still pushing forward. I know John is smiling and so happy that he gets to watch us on TV.

I reason that as long as I'm smiling 90 percent of the time, I can handle the setbacks that occur 10 percent of the time.

We keep trying to get better - constantly working at it. We love to tour. I love to play in front of people. You sit there, and everybody's smiling, and you're smiling. It's a good time.

The highs in my career have been overcoming the problems and smiling at them and getting on.

I get tetchy with myself when I forget. I also get tetchy when directors ask you for take after take after take after take for no apparent reason. I've heard Maggie Smith gets tetchy for the same reason.

Salomon Brothers, E. F. Hutton, Shearson, Lehman, Smith Barney... all these firms disappear, and the Street just rolls on.

You have to capitalise on any success you have and keep doing what you do as well as you can. But how do you define success? In my book, it's to be playing those parts you saw your idols - Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave - playing when they were the age you are now.

I've had to fight for roles and I've lost a hundred roles, but 'Smoking' and 'Smith' were phone calls. That's the dream.

I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.

Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.

When you play this game long enough, everything is not going to be smooth sailing.

My point is, no one can stop the Internet. No one can stop that march. It doesn't mean that it's going to be smooth, though.

My entry into screenwriting was not smooth.

Acting has not been a smooth sailing journey.

Things don't always go smoothly.

Good roles are hard to come by, and whether they're a few lines or a lead, you snap 'em up when they come along.

I'm good at snap decisions. But if you let me, I will chew something to death.

I don't get to make many features. It's not like that's something I can just snap my fingers and make happen.

There's a lot of games played, a lot of snaps played over the long haul.