Quotes About Persistence

I started out making skateboard videos. Soon, it dawned on me I just wasn't that great at skateboarding. So I put down the skateboard and just kept going with the camera.

I started making music videos in my twenties and made my first feature, 'Guncrazy,' at 29. I then spent the greater part of my thirties directing features.

It's been a very strange trajectory because I struggled for so many years. I mean, I was doing these videos, I was doing these live shows, I had a lot of fans in New York, the press would write about me, but I couldn't get a paying job, and so my father and I were really like a team.

When I started out, Jay Leno used to say you're not as good as you think you can be until at least your sixth year. I was like, what the hell is he talking about? 'Cause I was in my third year, and I thought, 'I got this.' I kept videos of myself performing, and in my fifth year I watched my third year and realized he couldn't have been more right.

When we started doing sketch comedy - actually in '91 in Chicago - making your own videos, which we did, took forever. It would take like, a year to make one video. It was just so difficult to edit and just do everything you had to do.

Even if I hadn't won 'Drag Race,' even if I'd never been on, I'd still be working my tail off, creating live shows, magazines, videos, anything I possibly could!

Two things - one is obvious: always keep making. The second thing, with regard to music videos specifically - the music video industry can be a place that takes advantage of young freelancers and filmmakers. Make sure you're making stuff that you're proud of and you can get behind.

You don't have to take my word for it, obviously, but in making 1,000 videos, 98 per cent of them I lost money on. So I know a thing or two about staying true and rising above the money. Because if I was for the money I would be someone who'd put up Coca Cola in my videos left and right.

I have been directing ads and videos for quite some time. And I wanted to direct films.

There's always another press conference, another training session and more videos to watch.

When we started, we were in a van and looking for change under the seats so we could buy food. We went from that to having a hit and getting to do things like make music videos with million-dollar budgets.

You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it, you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.

With engineering, I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly.

From a purely selfish, batting point of view, I couldn't bat any better than the 2010-11 Ashes and then in India in 2012. That was as good as I could play.

When you are in the valley, keep your goal firmly in view and you will get the renewed energy to continue the climb.

I have a strong point of view, and that's a double-edged sword. It can be a phenomenal characteristic in terms of getting things done, but it can also mean I will be relentless in my pushing for my point of view.

I have a view that if you build something that's good, and you keep making it better, it lasts.

As long as it's making you happy and you're enjoying it, then you should never stop writing music. Whether it's going to take you somewhere, viewed by other people, or it's literally you in a bedroom at home, it should be something that you do for yourself.

Viewed as a geometric figure, the ant's path is irregular, complex, and hard to describe.

There will always be people who say your dreams are impossible. But they can't stop you, unless you agree with them.

Stopping before them, St. Vincent confided, "I would have found you sooner, but I was attacked by a swarm of dingy-dippers.

Love, she reflected bitterly, wasn't something you bargained with or negotiated with...it lived by its own rules. Love appeared when you didn't want it and refused to go. It was like an invasive species that entered your garden without warning, and proceeded to grow wildly out of control, resistant to every method employed to kill it. Basically, love was pigweed.

Hard work often produces better results than talent.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be," she replied