Quotes About Commitment

I'm looking at the U.S. Senate in 2004," he said. "I promised Michelle that if I did it, this would be up or out for me. If it doesn't work, I'm going to have to go out and make a living.

When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.

When you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.

Art is a high calling – fears are coincidental. Coincidental, sneaky and disruptive, we might add, disguising themselves variously as laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with materials or surroundings, distraction over the achievements of others – indeed as anything that keeps you from giving your work your best shot. What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit.

The only work really worth doing — the only work you can do convincingly — is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot — and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the things that draw us in-and why should any of us have more than a handful of those? The only work really worth doing-the only work you can do convincingly-is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.

But curiously, while artists always have a myriad of reasons to quit, they consistently wait for a handful of specific moments to quit. Artists quit when they convince themselves that their next effort is already doomed to fail. And artists quit when they lose the destination for their work — for the place their work belongs.

It is, after all, hard to imagine placing a full-time teaching career atop a full-time artmaking career without something going awry in the process. As the old proverb cautions: if you chase two rabbits, you catch neither.

Quitting is fundamentally different from stopping. The latter happens all the time. Quitting happens once. Quitting means not starting again — and art is all about starting again.

THOSE WHO WOULD MAKE ART might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit. It's a genuine tragedy. Worse yet, it's an unnecessary tragedy. After all, artists who continue and artists who quit share an immense field of common emotional

What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit. Each step in the artmaking process puts that issue to the test.

THOSE WHO WOULD MAKE ART might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit.

I'm a strong person, I'm a strong family man, I'm a strong husband and a strong father.

Notice, by extension, that in a democracy those committed to non-procreation could never, in the long run, prevail politically against those committed to procreation.

He lived the life he lived, like anybody, I guess, and he paid his dues, like everybody. Maybe what I mean when I say he made his life so hard was that he always tried to pay his dues in front.

When my daughers, Simone and Emily look at me 25 or 30 years from now and say 'what were you doing, when global warming was happening? And when you guys knew what was coming down the road?' I want to be able to say, 'guys, I was doing everything I knew how to do.

We have knowledge. We have to do something." His first punched the hair. "Who is with me!" Noone of the moved so much as a muscle.

Now you love me and from now on it is my job to see that you go on loving me.

The fact is, I am in my third marriage and I do not believe in divorce. But I was half the problem, I guarantee you. More than half the problem. I couldn't negotiate with the other women.

I believe that anybody who gets married should go to a counselor for months before the wedding. I think that's going to save guys a lot of money and the ladies a lot of heartbreak.

Be careful of your word, even in keeping the most trifling appointment. But do not blame another for a failure of that kind till you have heard his excuse.

Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without.