Quotes About Persistence

When I was first starting out as a kid, I tried to pad my resume with everything I had ever done - ice-skate, carry a tune. I can't dance for my life, but I can learn, so I'll tell people I can dance. I play the piano - I'm a really good pianist, actually.

We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn't played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn't just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.

I still remember how hard I worked on the tune of 'Raree rareeram... ;' the first tune I tried was rejected.

When I was first getting into the guitar, I played it incessantly. I lived it, breathed it, ate it, and slept it. I was also extremely self-critical, so from early on, I made sure to develop good playing habits - I constantly strove to sound in tune and have a great tone, and to play cleanly and in time.

My mother tried to teach me when I was a small child to sing but failed because of my inability to carry a tune.

The first time I learned how to play, my guitar was out of tune. I didn't know it; I just started writing songs.

We should not seek to tune out the realists' whines or taunts, as they may provide good instruction.

It's all discipline and schedule for me. I mean, it's very easy to get distracted by the real world and things that intrude constantly, and it takes dedication to live totally in your head and be tuned out.

I just couldn't get anyone to sing my songs, so I had to sing my own tunes.

I have to work at tunes to get them to come out. Sometimes I'll sit there for four or five hours and get absolutely nothing.

When we first started, in the early Eighties, we had some crappy guitars - Japanese knockoffs that wouldn't hold standard tuning. Later, we'd shove drumsticks or screwdrivers under strings to scheme new noises, sure. But initially, open tuning was a technique used to make our cheap guitars sound better. It wasn't academic or conceptual.

Struggling is hard because you never know what's at the end of the tunnel.

I speak to people who have coached me down the years who tell me to look at how far I've come and to just keep going, there will be light at the end of the tunnel.

I always believe in just have as much fun as you can so that when you're in the part that you hate, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, that you're close to finished.

To survive, you've got to keep wheedling your way. You can't just sit there and fight against odds when it's not going to work. You have to turn a corner, dig a hole, go through a tunnel - and find a way to keep moving.

When there's no light at the end of the tunnel, it's hard to keep things going.

I can't imagine something worse than scripts being written into a tunnel, thinking, 'I don't know when this ends. I don't know.' It usually ends when people get sick of it, but I think it's great when it gets to end on its own terms.

I think it's true that people seemed to have had a kind of tunnel vision in my regard, and that has been something that I've been having to fight against for a long time.

I've seen fire, and I've seen rain. I've also had to scramble over tundra to get to the Super Bowl and seen baseball turf fields that could fry a fielder's soles.

My goal one day is to be Brazil coach, but to get there I need to have a club career. I started well in Turkey. I started well in Russia and I did a good job in India.

If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say.

Once you get a taste of success, it's a hard thing to turn down.

Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, 'Oh, I forgot that bit,' then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you've figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!