Quotes About Persistence

The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.

I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

If people say, 'You can't do that,' you can be sure I will do my utmost to do it.

All I can do is continue to do my utmost and hope for the best.

It's a little difficult when something goes from being an utter obsession - a thing where your skill defines you as a person - to it just being a thing you occasionally do.

Trust me: Every entrepreneur has felt like an utter loser at some point.

I remember spending one summer being utterly obsessed with trying to get the legendary unreachable 'Ice Key' from 'Banjo-Kazooie.'

You don't sit up in a cave and write the Great American Novel and know it is utterly superb, and then throw it page by page into the fire. You just don't do that. You send it out. You have to send it out.

From the age of 6 to 33, I was utterly driven and single-minded.

As long as I am capable of working, and can learn lines and move around, I will carry on. I'd be utterly bored if I stopped.

I don't need the water to be inspired. My stories inspire me, not the location of where I'm parked. And good thing, since I've had to finish books in airports, in the RV we used to have, the lake house, while on vacation, at home, in the kitchen when my office PC was on the fritz.

I had a long run for, like, probably 10 years with no vacation.

I'm a good example of someone who can come to Hollywood and keep their feet on the ground with all the rock stars, all the drama that goes with being here. It's still important to pump your own gas and to be able to vacuum.

I could make records at home in a vacuum, but that is not the situation. I'm just taking it one phase at a time.

Leia follows me like a vague smell.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

Being told you're too small and never going to make it is an opinion. And it's a valid opinion, and it's something you take in your stride.

When I was 13, I told Henry Winkler I wanted to act. He said, Do it and don't let anyone stand in your way. His validation just made it all the more true. I haven't stopped thanking him since.

There's obviously some validity to it. But I think it also points out that you obviously can do it on your own because people have been doing it long before they had the stuff.

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you'll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet.

It was the late '70s when my parents met. My dad was a lighting director for a soap opera, and my mom was a temp at the studio. They moved into a house in The Valley in L.A., to a neighborhood that was leafy and affordable.