Quotes About Resilience

Most of all, there is this truth: No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy's reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself. Eventually, the teachers won't be there anymore. The walls of the school will fall away, and you'll be on your own. The hours that you will then put into practice, study, auditions, and creation will be entirely up to you.

For better or for worse, my dad taught me that the best place to pitch a tent will always be the spot marked NO CAMPING.

At no moment in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.

You must learn in life to take things more lightly, my dear. The world is always changing. Learn how to allow for it. Someone makes a promise, and then they break it. A play gets good notices, and then it folds. A marriage looks strong, and then they divorce. For a while there's no war, and then there's another war. If you get too upset about it all, you become a stupid, unhappy person—and where's the good in that?

The image of the tragic artist who lays down his tools rather than fall short of his impeccable ideals holds no romance for me. I don't see this path as heroic. I think it's far more honorable to stay in the game - even if you're objectively losing the game - than to excuse yourself from participation because of your delicate sensibilities. But in order to stay in the game, you must let go of your fantasy of perfection.

My own glints of darkness did not frighten him; he had such darkness of his own that nobody else's shadows scared him.

But I love him. So love him. But I miss him. So miss him. Send some love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it. [...]

Love over suffering, always.

What you absolutely must not do is turn around and walk out. Otherwise, you will miss the party, and that would be a pity, because—please believe me—we did not come all this great distance, and make all this great effort, only to miss the party at the last moment.

It's all for the best.

Struggle explained everything.

Her sadness was ceaseless, but she kept it quarantined in a governable little quarter of her heart. It was the best she could do.

Back off, Jack-I got four brothers protecting my ass,' and I just rode on by him

It was during the war, too, that I learned how to be comfortable sitting alone in a bar or restaurant. For many women, this is a strangely difficult thing to do, but eventually I mastered it. (The trick is to bring a book or newspaper, to ask for the best table nearest to the window, and to order your drink just as soon as you sit down.) Once I got the hang of it, I found that eating alone by the window in a quiert restaurant is one of life's greatest secret pleasures.

You don't need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.

Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given. You were invited, and you showed up, and you simply cannot do more than that.

It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back.

Just remember- all your misery will be waiting for you at the door upon your exit, should you care to pick it up again when you leave.

He realized that "failure has a function. It asks you whether you really want to go on making things.

Most dangerously of all, such thinking assumes that if you cannot win, then you must not continue to play.

But I remember thinking that learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person. If you want to be an artist of any sort, it seemed to me, then handling your frustration is a fundamental aspect of the work—perhaps the single most fundamental aspect of the work.

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

Whenever I got those rejection letters, then, I would permit my ego to say aloud to whoever had signed it: "You think you can scare me off? I've got another eighty years to wear you down! There are people who haven't even been born yet who are gonna reject me someday—that's how long I plan to stick around.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment, lay down in my new bed and turned off the light. I waited to start crying or worrying