Quotes About Perseverance

I've considered myself a writer since I was 7 years old, but I've done a lot of jobs along the way. I enjoyed waiting tables and tending bar during college, especially when it got busy, so I might like managing a big restaurant. In fact, I might like managing many kinds of businesses or organizations.

I think most marriages, mine included, you're constantly tending the garden, constantly working at it.

My mum had me when she was just 18 and she worked three jobs, including bar tending, to put food on the table and she also went to night college. She worked really hard for us and I kept myself busy with football.

For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it's a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me.

Generally, with films, what tends to happen is that a few people get a lot of momentum out of it, and a lot of people don't.

When you're losing that tends to kind of build the character of everybody together.

I feel like I've got a process swing. It takes a long time to get to where it needs to be and to stay there. The advantage - if I'm healthy - more often than not, it tends to stay there.

My pinkie tends to pop out of place a lot while I'm playing - I just pop it back in. I notice it when I move my hand and it feels stiff. I mean, it's been happening my whole life. It's never broken - just pops out of place real easy.

I only had two scholarship offers with Tennessee State being one of them. That put a lot on my shoulders - not having the same opportunities as some other guys I knew - and it didn't feel like many people had much faith in me as a basketball player.

But I remember back in 1998, the year after Peyton Manning left Tennessee, a lot of people didn't really give Tennessee a chance. There was a lesser-known Tee Martin playing quarterback. He ended up leading them to a national championship in 1998 the year after Peyton left.

Tennis has given me soul.

If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that's concentration.

I always give Lindsay so much credit for her tennis game, for her attitude, for her person, and because of how she deals with all the things. I don't think people give her enough credit for how well she's doing.

I have always believed that my job is to try and give my best on the tennis courts.

There is no shortcuts. Play your best tennis, give your heart out, and anything can happen.

You know, a lot of things changed. What never changed is the illusion to keep playing tennis, the illusion to keep doing well the things, and the illusion to be in a good position of the ranking and play these kind of matches.

My mother is a fighter. After she battled polio and learned to walk again, the doctors told her she would be a cripple her entire life. Instead of accepting defeat, she refused this fate and went on to become the West African Women's Singles tennis champion in college.

At the end of the day, it is a very long year. The tennis season is pretty much ten months of the year.

Even if I play backgammon with my coach, I hate to lose. I won't talk to him for, like, an hour. So imagine how it feels when you lose at tennis. That makes me determined not to lose because I hate it so much. Even at a set down and match point, I always believe I can come back.

I spent a whole year when I was injured just trying to get my arm back to the point where I could hit a tennis ball for more than 30 minutes a day. I'd hit for 15 minutes and it would feel as if my arm was going to fall off.

Growing up not being the biggest guy around, you learn different ways of playing tennis. I've learned to adapt.

Like many men who play tennis, when I hit a ball into the net, I tend to look daggers at my racket, reproaching it for playing so badly when I myself have been trying so hard.

I did realise more than ever, after the stabbing, that tennis is a business - a tough business.

After almost 30 years of playing this sport, I've learned something. I've learned that, no matter what happens, or happened... or where you are, or where you've been... at the end of the day: tennis is tennis. It's always, always tennis. And there's nothing better.