Quotes About Persistence

'Alexander, Who's Trying His Best to Be the Best Boy Ever' was inspired by a combination of my grandson, my son, and myself - all those times when each of us has decided that we're just not going to get into trouble anymore. But it's so hard to be good all of the time!

When it was over, it was not really over, and that was the trouble.

I was having trouble making ends meet, and my beginnings weren't meeting either.

Stubborn people get themselves in a lot of trouble, but they also get things done.

My parents actively tried to discourage me from going into music - especially Dad, because of the troubled times he had in his youth.

I don't do anything in order to cause trouble. It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble. I'm proud to be a troublemaker.

Honestly, I was a troublemaker. The environment I grew up in, my mom and my sister, they decided they were going to sign me up in every single thing to keep me busy. I played football, basketball, baseball. Anything, whatever was in season, I was signed up for it. Basketball was one of the things that just stuck.

When you start in life, if you find you are wrongly placed, don't hesitate to change, but don't change because troubles come up and difficulties arise. You must meet and overcome and conquer them. And in meeting and overcoming and conquering them, you will make yourself stronger for the future.

I don't think of my characters as bumbling. I think that trouble is what drives a novel, both big troubles and small troubles, and whatever people try to do in life, there are a series of stumbling-blocks in the way, and I think that makes for interesting reading. I think of them as doing their best with the roadblocks that they're given.

There's no taking trout with dry breeches.

Everything's challenging for me, singing-wise. I'm like an old truck with one gear left on it.

My father worked in the Post Office. A lot of double shifts. All his friends were in the same situation - truck drivers, taxi cab drivers, grocery clerks. Blue collar guys punching the clock and working long, hard hours. The thought that sustained them was the one at the center of the American dream.

I was living in my truck, bouncing in bars - a 20-year-old kid trying to break up all these red neck fights. But hey, I did what I had to do to survive.

A couple months before I got the audition for 'Arrow,' my husband and I had just sold everything we owned, packed our dogs and belongings into a truck, and moved to Los Angles with a prayer and almost no money. When I ended up booking the role, we both cried from joy and gratitude for a week straight.

Dreams can still come true; you need a great deal of energy and determination, and a little bit of luck.

If a small-town boy like me who bagged groceries was able to make his dreams come true, you can too.

There are no shortcuts to true excellence.

Any sort of major change we want to make in our life is hard. Change is not easy and true change takes time and takes thousands, millions probably, of failures along that path and that's the interesting thing.

I stayed true to my dreams and, eventually, they came true.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.

If I write scripts that nobody likes, I don't think we'll be doing 'True Detective.'

The true measure of a leader is what it takes to stop him.

I think my goal is to find a way to spend all of my time writing. I mean, sort of; true success is I'm doing nothing but writing if I do my job correctly.

There are times when the only access I have to the truest person that I am is when I'm alone and trying to solve a sentence. It's exciting, even when it's frustrating, even when I can't do it right.