Trying Quotes - Page 25

• I'd accomplished everything I had set out to do - winning the French and Australian Opens, the Olympic gold medal and the Davis Cup. So I said to myself: 'Why don't you try another year and see if you can enjoy your tennis like you did once?' And I've been doing it.

  Yevgeny Kafelnikov

  Winning, Years, Tennis

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• All plot comes from the character's trying to get something, to achieve something, wanting, desiring, longing.

  Robert Olen Butler

  Character, Plot, Longing

  Robert Olen Butler (2007). “From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction”, p.139, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• You find what you are best at and stick to it. I found my sound early on. Look at U2: they haven't changed their music for 20 years. Anyway, many people come unstuck when they try to change what they do and what they are known for.

  Joan Armatrading

  Years, People, Sound

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• Every so often every artist feels, 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985, I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away.

  Helen Frankenthaler

  Artist, Three, Gone

  "Artful Survivor". Interview with Deborah Salomon, www.nytimes.com. May 14, 1989.

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• I failed on a climbing problem eight times before realizing I was climbing as high as I knew I could and then letting go. On my next try I climbed with no thought of failure and reached the top. We cannot know what we can do in advance. The only way to find out is to go all-out trying, thinking only of success.

  Royal Robbins

  Letting Go, Thinking, Eight

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• The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition

  W. Chan Kim

  Blue Ocean, Competition, Way

  W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne (2015). “Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant”, p.4, Harvard Business Review Press

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• I think Americans like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put them into my books.

  John Keegan

  Book, Thinking, Practicals

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• The point is that something I thought was perfect has been broken, and I'm having to find the beauty in what is there instead of what I thought was there. Like this shell. I can either spend all my time wishing it were perfect, trying to imagine it the way it was or might have been, or I can see how beautiful it is just like this.

  James Howe

  Beautiful, Broken, Perfect

  James Howe (1997). “The Watcher”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

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• The idea was to focus on the primal drama of parenthood: the way from moment to moment you swing from comforter to tormentor, just as kids simultaneously light up our lives and drive us nuts. I was trying to capture that strange, bipolar quality of parenthood. For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have.

  Emma Donoghue

  Drama, Kids, Light

  "Emma Donoghue: 'To say Room is based on the Josef Fritzl case is too strong'" by Sarah Crown, www.theguardian.com. August 13, 2010.

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• Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all its advantages at once. I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

  Leon Blum

  Giving, Choices, Doe

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• I had a long conversation with Steve Carlton. He told me that on the days he pitched, he felt it was his responsibility to make everyone around him better, to lift his teammates. Thats what I try to do.

  Randy Johnson

  Responsibility, Long, Teammate

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• I think everything comes together. I think it's me being more comfortable with what I am trying to do in terms of how I pitch, in using the curveball and stuff like that. It all brings the package together.

  Tom Glavine

  Thinking, Together, Stuff

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• Pressure is working down the pit. Pressure is having no work at all. Pressure is trying to escape relegation on 50 shillings a week. Pressure is not the European Cup or the Championship or the Cup Final. That's the reward.

  Bill Shankly

  Finals, Pits, Rewards

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• You can waste a whole lifetime
  Trying to be
  What you think is expected of you
  But youll never be free

  Chris Rea

  Thinking, Waste, Lifetime

  Song: Gone Fishing, Album: Auberge, 1991

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• You never know how a single interaction with a person might affect their life, so you must constantly try to be at your best.

  Bobby Orr

  Might, Interaction, Persons

  Bobby Orr (2013). “Orr: My Story”, p.36, Penguin Canada

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• I will try to make a doll of Oksana with a little dog.

  Oksana Baiul

  Sports, Dog, Dolls

  The Golden Skate Interview, www.goldenskate.com. March 7, 2003.

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• I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.

  Shawn Colvin

  Song, Writing, Successful

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• Without trying, I'm different.

  Paul Wellstone

  Different

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• The whole underlying theme for the new music... is to communicate honest, human values, and in doing that to try to improve the quality of life.

  Charlie Haden

  Quality, Honest, Theme

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• Humans elect leaders on the basis of the promises they make. We [vampires] try to elect ours based solely on the strength of their character.

  Darren Shan

  Character, Leader, Promise

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• I remember an incident overseas about five years ago where a player punched a referee and knocked him cold. I don't think anything like that will ever happen in the NBA. Emotions run rampant. The games are so intense, and the stakes are so high. (But) At the end of the day, players and coaches really respect officials and really appreciate that they try to do a good job.

  Jalen Rose

  Running, Jobs, Player

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• Stop trying to find the formula that will instantly make your idea into a winner. Instead of being scientists, the best marketers are artists. They realize that whatever is being sold is being purchased, because it creates an emotional want, not because it fills a simple need.

  Seth Godin

  Artist, Simple, Emotional

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• Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records

  Stephen Stills

  Player, Always Trying, Groups

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• When you say there's too much evil in this world you assume there's good. When you assume there's good, you assume there's such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that's Who you're trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there's no moral Law Giver, there's no moral law. If there's no moral law, there's no good. If there's no good, there's no evil. What is your question?

  Ravi Zacharias

  Law, Evil, World

  FaceBook post by Ravi Zacharias from Aug 20, 2014

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• I feel blessed to have an opportunity to try out for a second Olympics team and if it doesn't work out, hey I gave it my all.

  Alicia Sacramone

  Team, Blessed, Opportunity

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