Quotes About Perseverance

I was able to do well for myself, make a statement in the league. I had a heck of a time doing it, but at the end of the day, it's about me and my family and being comfortable and being fun.

Making records is fun. It's not some big statement. You're allowed to make mistakes.

When you look at guys who get recruited, most of the best athletes, they come from poor families. I don't forget. I was a junior looking through my mother's stuff and looked at her bank statement, and we had $30 in the bank.

I've always said boxing will not retire me, I will retire from boxing, and I stand by that statement.

I've had statements made - 'Who in the heck wants to hear a 60-year-old singer?' That statement was made - it's disheartening, you know, because you say, 'Well, hey, why should a guy feel like that about it?'

Maybe by me delivering statements, I'll get the fight I deserve. And the only way I can deliver that is keep fighting top competition and being explosive.

The Rhodes scholarship process was very extensive. I had to do several personal statements, rewrite those over and over and over again. I had to get some letters of recommendation.

Both my mother and my father grew up in Asia, in a time of political instability. They'd earned college degrees before setting foot in the States but had to work menial jobs early on in order to make ends meet.

I never interned. The first job I ever had was a very low-paying job, and the guy running the radio station was so poor, he couldn't pay us sometimes - so it's almost like an internship, right?

My friends seem to think that an hour and a half effort a day is all they need to bring to the altar to make things work for them. I couldn't do that. I thought that if you didn't work at least as hard as the guy who runs a gas station, then you had no right to hope for achievement. You certainly had to work all day, every day.

I'm sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain't me.

If you really want a radio station to play your song, go to that radio station every day with that song in your hand and say, 'Please play it.'

It's really a good feeling to know that we put this up there, that it's working, that all these people's plans that worked so hard came together and things fit and we've got a real space station.

Start in a small TV station so you can make all of your embarrassing mistakes early and in front of fewer people!

I had three jobs my junior and senior year of high school. I worked for the gas station and worked for a pizza place.

I grew up hearing stories about how my maternal grandfather had put himself through engineering school in New York City. He saved money by walking down to a gas station once a week to take a shower. When I applied to college, both education and investment value were important to me.

Yes, it's hard to stay in shape, but it's also hard to raise kids. That doesn't mean you get to drop them off at your local fire station when they get to be a handful.

I don't see I'll ever arrive at the point where I'll say, 'Lance old boy, you've arrived at success.' There's no question about it. Once you get to the point where you've arrived at a station called success, you get complacent and lethargic. Those goals you set keep changing. But it's not a ruthless sort of thing.

I don't think people have an appreciation for the work that it takes to pull these missions off, like humans living on the space station continuously for 15 years. It is a huge army of hard-working people to make it happen.

In 1974 when I was 22 years old, I was working for $95 a week at WSPB, which was an Atlanta Braves-affiliated AM radio station in Sarasota, Florida. Fresh out of Northwestern University, I was the news director at the station, and my main bread and butter was to handle updates during the morning and afternoon drive times.

The first boss to give me a shot on-air left the station not long after I started reporting. The next boss fired me, and told me I was the worst person he'd ever seen on TV and that I would never make it. That felt like being punched in the gut repeatedly! But I pulled myself together and kept fighting for my dream.

At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.

I handed out flyers in malls, candies in gasoline stations; helped set up tarpaulins in bars. I played bit roles in several indie movies. Looking back, I can say it has definitely been a long journey.

I've never come into anything successful before. I've always been hired by horrible radio stations with horrendous reputations and nothing to lose.