Quotes About Dedication

doing this for a long time, honey. I'd be

Would it be an ideologue or a lover?

This is my rife. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rife is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I have master my life. My rife, without me, is useless. Without my rife, I am useless. I must fire my rife true. I must shoot before he shoots me. And I will. - Marine Rife Creed

I'll do my best," Wilson said. "Your best got you stationed on the Clarke," Abumwe said. "Do better than that.

Anything worth doing is worth doing at a fevered pitch.

Passion in this context refers to a sustained and deep commitment to achieving our full potential and greater capacity for self-expression in a domain that engages us on a personal level.

You are What you do When it counts.

For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold onto this illusion, even though he knows it's not true.

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

And is usually true of a man of one idea, [Charles] became obsessed.

A good writer always works at the impossible.

When you are writing, you must treat it as the most important thing in the world, even when you know it is not. This helps you take the job seriously and do your best on everything you write.

We will have to see whether the practicing through the years has prepared me for the writing of a book. For this is the book I have always wanted and have worked and prayed to be able to write. We shall see whether I am capable. Surely I feel humble in the face of this work. And as our Roman friends would say when casting outside themselves for help, Ora pro mihi. February

As is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed.

Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.

This must be a good book," he wrote in Working Days on June 10, 1938. "It simply must. I haven't any choice. It must be far and away the best thing I have ever attempted—slow but sure, piling detail on detail until a picture and an experience emerge. Until the whole throbbing thing emerges.

A writer and his work is and should be like a surly dog with a bone, suspicious of everyone, trusting no one, loving no one. It's hard to justify such a life but that's the way it is if it is done well.

Ha oído hablar alguna vez de manos de plantadora? —La verdad es que no, señora —Bueno, lo único que puedo decirle es lo que se siente. Cuando se eliminan los capullos que no se quieren. Entonces todo se concentra en las yemas de los dedos. Lo hacen los propios dedos. Los ves trabajar. Lo sientes. Arrancan un capullo tras otro. Sin equivocarse nunca. Se funden con la planta. ¿Comprende?

He raged at his farm, forced it, added to it, drilled and trimmed, and his boundaries extended. He took no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.

In 1963 Steinbeck told Caskie Stinnett: I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it. I take a hell of a long time to get started. The actual writing is the last process. Though Steinbeck actually wrote the novel in ninety-three sittings, it was his way of saying that The Grapes of Wrath was an intuited whole that embodied the form of his devotion. p xxxviii

And the greatest foolishness of all lies in the fact that to do it at all, the writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true. If he does not, the work is not worth even what it otherwise might have been.

He took no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.