Quotes About Perseverance

I constantly have a devil on my shoulder telling me that what I'm doing is really horrible, and then somehow the lightning strike happens, and everything comes together.

Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven.

I hate telling that story to people who've been struggling for years.

It's like all the signs were telling me that I shouldn't be a boxer, so I quit.

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

Take everything you can from what people say. Keep going and stick to your instincts. And what your soul tells you to do, use that.

Your heart can only take you so far - sometimes the physical body tells you otherwise.

I'm told I'm a statistic. I'm told that my young black sisters are disease-ridden... but we are greater than what society tells us we are.

If your doctor tells you you have a rare disease that he or she has never seen, if you've got an incurable cancer, boy, don't accept that. You know, go and get a second opinion.

Anybody who tells you they're not scared when starting a new book project is a very good liar.

It's motivating when someone tells you it's possible to do something that seems impossible.

I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?

I'm a survivor, at least that's what everyone tells me.

No studio in Hollywood wanted 'Cold Mountain.' None. No one wanted 'Ripley,' no one wanted 'The English Patient.' That tells you there isn't really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.

Something happens to me when someone says, 'You can't.' I'm generally not very competitive; unless someone tells me I can't do something that should be done.

Everyone tells me to play as long as you can. Sometimes, it goes in one ear and out the other.

If you will do what God tells you to do, there's no person on Earth and no devil in Hell that can keep you from having what God wants you to have.

I wasn't the brightest kid in school. I was a backbencher troubling the frontbencher, and eventually I failed in my 10th grade. But then in higher secondary, there were only three people who got first division in arts, and I was one of them. So this tells you, where you put your mind and heart into, that's where you go.

Conventional wisdom tells us to avoid taking unalterable action while at a low point in life. I have never been conventional.

I just know whenever I fall off His path, things get really hard. So I just stick with what God tells me to do.

You graduate from film school and move to Hollywood. Hollywood tells you, 'We're not the place for you to make films,' so you decide you have to make a film yourself.

I will do whatever the UFC tells me to do, but there's not a doubt in my mind that I can be champion.

I don't mind getting old except for the pain. I have two new knees, so going downstairs is not perfect. Nobody tells you about the pain.

Turn up your radio. Watch lots of telly and eat loads of choc. Feel guilty. Stay up all night. Learn everything in six hours that has taken you two years to compile. That's how I did it.