Quotes About Persistence

I've been doing my job well for 17 years. People must see something in me. Otherwise, I'd be over and out.

The more I do, the more frightened I get. But that is essential. Otherwise why would I go on doing it?

I'm never happy with the work I put in. No. I need to be told by my director and people around me that it is fine. Otherwise, I'll even go, like, 'One more take.'

Ofili is still a champion. It would be a huge mistake to think otherwise.

My entire life, nothing's been easy. This is the way it ought to be.

God doesn't want us to merely sit around dreaming about things we can do and be. That's a good place to start, but a poor place to stop. God wants us to turn our dreams into action.

Ever since we were little, we were so on fire for our dreams. We never let anyone blow our flames out.

One question hovers over all of us who choose to spend our lives writing: why keep doing this in a world where so many forces are aligned against us?

So often in this industry people tell us we've had our day or we've had our time.

Brave means that we will try to create something for ourselves. Brave means never going backwards when we can go forwards. That is the bravery that we need.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she'll be constantly running back.

No matter what, you're going to have hard days out here. There's going to be a drop here or a tough pass that you didn't come down with there.

When I got out of college, I booked a movie called 'Go for It!' with Lionsgate, came out here, and I've been acting ever since - or trying, constantly trying.

For a while, I couldn't get arrested in television because everybody thought of me as that guy on 'Trapper John.' So I thought, 'Great, I'll come out here to New York and do some theater, and when they get tired of me, I'll do something else.'

My plan is to stay in New York for as long as I can and do some theater out here and just keep working creatively.

My mind could keep going all day long. You give me a new body, and I could go for another 20 years out here, and do it well.

I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I'd have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.

I'm going to go to school. It doesn't matter what the outcome is as long as I did it. I can say I did it.

When I talk to young people, I always tell them the biggest lesson I learned was that you shouldn't care about the outcome. If it fails, it fails. Every failure will groom you for your next big reward.

I basically never believed that I was a commercial actor. Just because of the outcome of many auditions over time. No one hired me.

I have always put the same effort in all my films irrespective of their outcome.

If I don't get the outcome I want, I'm just going to keep working.

Hopefully we'll figure out how to get 'Iron Man 2' going, and I'll be involved with that. You have got to outdo what you did before. So, if the last one took two years, we would need at least that to do what we are talking about or, at least, thinking about.

Not to be offensive, not to be capricious, not to be arbitrary, not to be neurotic, not to be an actor outer, you're just trying to get in and you're given so little time to get in gently, but it's always hard.