Quotes About Effort

ambition rarely has anything to do with talent. Luck is best, and talent limps along a little bit behind luck.

Baby, that's grammar school. Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working. Out here we call it hustling. I'd like to be a good hustler.

Manny, what are you doing working in auto parts?" "Resting. My ambition is handicapped by laziness.

You can feel your life being pounded to a pulp by the useless waste of time.

But trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.

I didn't like the eight hour job. I didn't even like the four hour job, even though I couldn't get one.

There is really nothing you can do easily: live or die or accept fame or money or defeat, it's all hard.

hell, I worked HARD all my life!" (they think this is a virtue, but it only proves a man is a damn fool.)

you son of a bitch, she said, I am trying to build a meaningful relationship. you can't build it with a hammer, he said.

Just like some guys can't taxi or pimp or hustle dope, most guys, and gals too, can't be postal clerks.

not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.

The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy. It was something we would all have to work for once again.

But you must have imperfect hours to get perfect hours. You must kill ten hours to make two hours live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours, ALL the years.

we were made to accomplish the easy things and made to live through the things that are hard.

it's a war not easily won

Mark was one of those people who always insisted that our friendship was real no matter how much effort I exerted to stay away from him.

things begin to lose their natural value as they near human endeavor. nothing against Beethoven: he did fine for what he was but I wouldn't want him on my rug with one leg over his head while he was licking his balls.

It's hard enough to live...let alone 'create.

It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected.

It is uphill work writing books

I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect (compared to animals or other living beings), only in zeal and hard work; and I still think there is an eminently important difference

Needing and getting don't seem likely to match up any time soon... What needs doing is mine to do.

So she guessed you could word hard to make yourself who you wanted to be and yet find that the passing years had transformed you beyond your own recognition. End up disappointed in yourself, despite your best efforts.