Quotes About Persistence

Non illegitimi te carborundum, the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is "Don't let the bastards get you down." Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it. MOTHER TERESA

There is just this dream, this feeling, this urge, this desire. There is seldom any real proof, but the dream lives on.

For example, if you remembered the smell of fresh-baked bread, a visit to a bakery could be a wonderful Artist Date.) Never Too Late The joke runs like this: Question: Do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to play the piano? Answer: The same age you'll be if you don't. A year from now you will wish you had started today. —KAREN LAMB

Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

The first trick, the one I am practicing now, is to just start where you are. It's a luxury to be in the mood to write. It's a blessing but it's not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action.

The artist child must begin by crawling. Baby steps will follow and there will be falls—yecchy first paintings, beginning films that look like unedited home movies, first poems that would shame a greeting card.

QUESTION: Do you know how old I'll be by the time I learn to play the piano? ANSWER: The same age you will be if you don't.

Any success postulated on a permanent artistic plateau dooms us, and it to failure.

Remember that it is far harder and more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to do the work.

In order to do something well, we must first be willing to do it badly.

By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

Illegitemus non carborundum est ("Don't let the bastards grind you down").

I would far prefer to have things happen as they naturally do, such as the mousse refusing to leave the mold, the potatoes sticking to the skillet, the apple charlotte slowly collapsing. One of the secrets of cooking is to learn to correct something if you can, and bear with it if you cannot.

Is it 'good' to go on doing the same old oblivious thing, to still enjoy it no matter what? Does perseverance steady the world?

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

Because once you had been through certain things, their presence inside you never really disappeared.

Et combien faut-il de ces petites garces pour faire 2,5kg à votre avis? Je vais vous le dire : il en faut 300, c'est-à-dire, une fois coupées, 600 morceaux baignant dans leur jus, des pépins à ôter 600 fois à la pointe du couteau, avec l'inquiétude d'en oublier.

You only followed where you were going if you wanted to get back to where you had started from, and she knew that was impossible.

Life was the cat that dragged the parrot downstairs by its tail; his head banged against every step.

After two hours or so, I gave up. I came back the next day, and the next, without success. Then I drove to the street with the pub and the shop, and parked outside. I waited, went into the shop and bought a few things, waited some more, drove home. I had absolutely no sense of wasting my time: rather, it was the opposite way round—that this was what my time was now for.

You still don't get it. You never did, and you never will. So stop even trying.