Quotes About Persistence

After high school, I drove out to L.A. with a friend of mine who had just graduated also, and I started auditioning. I got an agent, but it was all 'Saved By the Bell' auditions.

It took me 10 years to get a four-year degree, but I graduated.

I went to NYU for a year and a half, and I graduated from there and then years later went to Columbia for graduate school.

When I graduated, I sort of went from school to being a cartoonist, and I couldn't draw.

When I graduated from Parsons School of Design, the dean at that time said I would never be a designer. Obviously I didn't listen.

After I graduated, I didn't have the resources to go to the studio, which is why I then went to social media.

When I went to theater school, most of the people I graduated with aren't working. I've consistently worked and made a good living.

I graduated college, my degree is in theatre, so I went to Chicago and tried to get into the theatre scene up there, but it was real hard to break in and find paying work.

I moved to L.A. straight out of graduating my arts high school and worked three jobs to afford living while taking acting classes and auditioning often.

I work every day until I do not have more to say. I learned from Graham Greene that a very good way is to stop work in the middle of a sentence. Then you know exactly how to continue the day after.

I like to go against the grain, against what's out there. Every day is like a challenge.

I want to have better results at the Grand Slams, and of course, one day I want to be No. 1 in the world.

Hopefully I can win grand slams in the future but until then I have to work very, very hard.

You have people who are out there age 30-plus still competing on the grand stage. If I keep in shape, keep to a certain speed and turn it up when I need to, I think I will be able to get out there and run what I need to run.

When you chase a dream, and no one understand or has your back except seven friends from high school and your grandma, it's not going to be easy.

My grandmother, she say I shouldn't be playing. I should go to church. Fially, I say I'm going do this, I'm going do it. And she got where she didn't bother me about it.

My grandmother always told me how you start is how you finish.

I challenged myself to carry on the style of guitar that my grandmother did: the Carter scratch.

And I feel like, as a black man within black culture, I know very well firsthand - as do my parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents - we're used to things not going our way.

You can't take anything for granted so I have to keep working.

You've got to put the work in every week. You can't take anything for granted.

You cannot eat a cluster of grapes at once, but it is very easy if you eat them one by one.

Success should always be just beyond your grasp.

The Caldecott Award has allowed me to keep doing what I'm doing for some time longer, for which I am ever grateful.