Quotes About Rejection

It's not unusual for a would-be entrepreneur to get turned down half a dozen times before finding a willing investor - yet in most companies, it takes only one 'nyet' to kill a project stone dead.

I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story.

I went out for the football team but, you know, I was too small. That's how I wound up in drama.

I quit acting when I was 11 because I was cast as a bouncing ball in 'Alice in Wonderland,' and I felt slighted and wounded.

I always felt I was wounded. That I was no good, a piece of crap, and that I wouldn't amount to anything, because that's what my father always told me. I just felt like I didn't belong anywhere.

Do people ever ask me to say 'Wow?' Never in interviews, but a few times on the street. I don't do it. I try to get away from them as quickly as possible and explain that I'm not a performing seal.

One of the defense mechanisms I have for the difficulties in the business, one of which is rejection, is that if I do the work, I go in, and I'm prepared and I audition and they don't hire me, I'm always just amazed, thinking, 'Wow! For that money, they could've had Bruce McGill, and they didn't take me? I just think that's amazing.'

After so many years of being rejected and having my body scrutinized... for Aerie to come along and basically say, 'We accept you. We don't care about your size.' To see those pictures on a Times Square billboard, and they were completely unretouched, I just was like, 'Wow. I finally feel good enough!'

Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on.

My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.

I didn't get to wrestle at all in TNA. I wanted to wrestle, and they wouldn't let me.

When I was just a strong wrestler, TNA didn't use me. I didn't have a character, so I knew I needed one.

Even if people that I was in love with - even if Bobby Fulton inherited a billion dollars and opened All Elite Wrestling, I was never going to be the manager of The Revival on a weekly television basis ever because that would require me being on the road on a weekly basis.

For me, I didn't have anyone in the wrestling world... trying to get my foot in the door was virtually impossible.

I didn't want wrestling anymore; I wanted to not want it. But I couldn't get a job anywhere, which was part of the reason I was homeless. I couldn't get a job pumping gas. I couldn't get a job working at a warehouse, I couldn't get a job at Baskin Robbins, I couldn't get a job anywhere.

Everyone out here in Los Angeles is trying to do whatever to break into films. It is a tough industry to get into, kind of like pro wrestling in a lot of respects when you think about it.

Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: 'After a heavy rainfall, poems titled 'Rain' pour in from across the nation.'

Like pretty much every short story writer, I submitted to every market under the sun and hoped for the best. The rejection letters I've collected over the years can probably make a book of their own.

If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Writers can feel pretty powerless in the big corporate world of publishing, but sometimes our greatest power is the ability to say 'no.'

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

I got dumped off 'The Iron Lady' a month before they started shooting, and then they brought two new writers on. Then I was brought back on again. I'm just a bit of a rubber ball. I just bounce back.

Advice to beginning SF writers? Write a lot, finish what you write, and when it's done, keep sending it out for quite awhile.