Quotes About Struggle

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

Finishing something is the hardest part. You know it's not as good as you hoped. You know there are plot problems. You know that by finishing it, you're saying - even if only to yourself - 'This is the best I can do.' And because it's not perfect, that's really hard.

What I have to outline is action and plot because I'm not particularly good at that.

I always pity people who have to write my plot synopses.

I do think of 'The Idiot,' in a way, as a self-standing book about a certain struggle to make meaning, the struggle for a girl to find meaning outside of the romance plot.

I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.

The poor are an especially important resource for innovation when they have the bravery and pluck to get out of the poor places in which they're living.

Those three years on 'Loving' were instrumental in helping me move through the next few years of work, where it was hit or miss. I was on series that would get canceled, then I would be a movie that wouldn't come out or do as well as I hoped. You learn that you have to just keep plugging away and never take anything for granted.

One of my aims was to be paid as well as a plumber. Plumber was better-paid than any performance artist who was always doing this for free. It is so important to make a good living from art. You know, John Cage, until he was 60, he couldn't pay electricity.

I come from a blue collar family, but my personal life isn't. I didn't get the gene that my grandfather had in spades. He was a local hero. Built the church that I went to. Built the house I grew up in. Steamfitter, pipefitter, electrician, mechanic and plumber. I wanted to do those things. But it just didn't come easy.

I didn't have indoor plumbing. I'd go to school dirty. I didn't have lunches.

People sometimes complain and it can feel like they think we want to lose. We're not machines where one plus one is always two.

For the next three plus years, I really was not in creative shape. That part of my brain was not functioning.

When we started Aftermath, we had something like 20 artists, and it was driving me crazy. I couldn't sit down and focus on any of it. Plus, it was doubly hard because you ended up crushing these people's dreams when you had to let them go.

I loved Plymouth and my time there because it helped me get my life back on track and I started scoring goals. But when I went there, it's not a place you dream of playing. It's not the team you dream of playing for. And you know when you're there, if you don't score goals or play well you're going down there and down from Plymouth is not pretty.

I have seven children. Even if you got a lot of money, feeding 5, 6, 7, 8 mouths, it will do some damage to your pocket.

A writer has to keep one foot in the street and one pocket empty and be hungry for it.

The Britons bankrupted me. I came to their country with £10 in my pocket and they gave me £1 back. But in between I had one hell of a ride.

There was some conflict there over Saturday nights because we were all really broke in those days- all the money you had in the world was in your pockets. Nowadays when you're say you're broke, it's not the same thing.

People forget that keeping a band together is hard; man, it's really hard. All the cliches apply about living in each other's pockets; of it being a relationship, a marriage, a family.

There were pockets of this career - whatever you want to call it - where I said, 'I've tapped out. I don't want to do this. I'm gonna go be a stage hand. I don't want to do this. I don't want to talk to people. I'm afraid of people. I'm going to walk away from everything that this was and is.'

Man, it's hard living in N.Y.C. - even when you have money in your pockets.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.