Quotes About Trying

For our family, the entire structure of our life, our home, our business relationships - the entire purpose is for everyone to be able to create in a way that makes them happy. Fame is almost an inconsequential by-product of what we're really trying to accomplish. We are trying to put great things into the world, we're trying to have fun, and we're trying to become the greatest versions of ourselves in the process of doing things we love.

Too many actors are trying to be cool: they're trying to do it with their hair, trying to do it with the color, trying to do it with clothes, or some bullshit attitude you're either cool or you're not, that is my theory. If you have to try, it is too late.

I'm not trying to change things in the world and trying to use my leverage to do so. The only thing I'm trying to change in the world is that I'm trying to increase the amount of useful information in it. And entertainment, honestly.

Tell me what's wrong with this idea: If you're selling to somebody, find someone like that person to sell to them. If you're trying to reach swing voters, if you're trying to reach people on the fence, if you're trying to reach Republicans who are unsure about this candidate... get people who switched! Get people who are registered Republicans. Get people who were George Bush voters who can't bring themselves to do it again. Talk to them, get them to explain what their reasons are, and show them to people. What's wrong with this idea?!

I'm not moving from an ideological standpoint. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life better. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life worse! I'm trying to find a happy medium that I can make some sense of.

In theater and dance, I was trying to win someone's approval, trying to get in, trying to be good. It felt out of my control, whereas music suddenly felt like this free expression. It was fun.

My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.

I'm trying to figure out what I can do creatively. It's about trying to find new things and trying to figure out voices and borrowing from things and learning as much as possible so that I have an archive of things to borrow from.

I'm just writing love songs. I'm not trying to be pop. I'm not trying to be jazz. I'm not trying to be anything. I'm just writing love songs. And everyone loves a love song.

I'm always trying to challenge everyone to raise the game on the artistic level. We are supposed to be the best. Make sure we don't get complacent or comfortable, and always trying to push the limit on trying to write great songs. At the end of the day it's why we do what we do.

That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.

Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You're scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.

When you make a film, you're creating the illusion of a natural experience. But everything is created on purpose. If I want you to be scared, I'm trying to scare you. If I want you to cry, I'm trying to make you sad. If I want you to laugh, I'm trying make you laugh. So, how I get you there is what makes it interesting, because I also want it to feel seamless, and not forced. That kind of constant experimentation is just fun to explore, and I love it.

I think when you're trying to get a film together that's had a long gustation process before I came on board and was trying to get financed in various stages, sometimes you're trying to make it more friendly to the financial interests or the commercial interests of various parties.

I was given the name by my brother when I was about eleven or twelve years old. He was older than me, and around that age I was starting to get into girls, and when they would call the house for him, and when he was not there, I would try to talk to them. I was trying to be the man and trying to get them to come and see me, not worrying about him. When he found out... he started calling me Ice Cube as a joke because he said I was trying to be too cool. I just liked it and started telling everybody in the hood "my name is Ice Cube."

If you're trying to diet, what do you do? You grab your two friends and say, 'We're going to the gym; let's do this together.' Money shouldn't be any different. If you're trying to make progress, if you're trying to save more, we really need to be able to get support.

I'm not sure I would call it agony but there is a kind of cyclic frustration. You get one story right and then here comes another one. When does that end? What I'm trying to do is get it to end right now, by recognizing that that cycle is writing. That is: trying to understand the frustrations and setbacks (and agony) as part of a bigger chess game you are playing with art itself.

It’s one of those things where when you’re training and fighting, you can’t worry about your bills, your mortgage, did you get your girlfriend pregnant, your pet’s cancer, or anything. Nothing else matters but that dude trying to kick you in the face or throw you on your head or trying to rip your arm out of the socket. It becomes a singularity of purpose, which an ADD kid like me rarely gets. I like that moment of clarity in fights, and I truly have that. I lose myself in the details of those 15 minutes and you don’t worry about what people think of you.

Sometimes I write music, sometimes I don't. I think I'm just writing more what's close to my heart, and musical stuff is close to my heart, and it's fun to write, and when something's fun to write you don't think about what statement you're trying to make or what genre you're trying to hone in on.

I like to keep at my craft. I like to keep reading scripts, whether I'm in it or not because of the fact that what would I do in a certain case? How would this happen or how would that go? I like to keep working with my mind, so when I do perform I have something to perform with, and it's not just like trying on new clothes. You're trying on a suit, but you know where the heck the pants go.

Looking back six years ago when I had just come from 'The Office' to 'The Mindy Project' and what I was trying to say back then. I feel like we don't revisit our younger idealistic selves, you just get in this pattern of churning these episodes out. Now I was like, "Let's try and get in my mind back then," because my life personally has changed so much, too. I just thought, "What was I trying to say? And now can I make it look like it was all part of one larger story."

Trying to hit Phil Niekro is like trying to eat jello with chopsticks. Sometimes you get a piece but most of the time you get hungry.

What we really are trying to do day to day now is to wake up every day and think about more activist behavior - what we can do to move the needle on the climate crisis, whether it is calling legislators or trying to win the conversation with someone who might not see the issues the way do.

I don't like being under someone elses thumb. I'm very supportive of other female artists, especially those trying to make their own statement... trying to do what they want instead of being someone else's Barbie doll.

I think before Twitter people didn't think that way, not in any sort of meaningful or specific way, so what I'm trying to say, if we're trying a bunch of stuff, a lot of cool and great social stuff, a lot of platform stuff, then some of it will stick, and some of it will be junked over. Some of it will be just like the cell phone, you can't imagine not having it.

We're not at the point of trying to stop global warming; it's too late for that. We're trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity

Trying to observe the slow shift from self-centeredness to empathy is like trying to watch grass grow.

Theoretically the human is supposed to be the smart one so as you get acquainted with the horse, you explore what it's going to take for him to understand what you would like him do, with as little trouble as possible. You're trying to avoid conflict, not trying to create it.

My films ought to be judged on whether they're entertaining or good as films, but not on the political view necessarily. I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push.

Jazz stopped being creative in the early '80s. After your acoustic era, where you had the likes of the Miles Davis Quintet, when it gets to the '70s it started being jazz fusion where you had more electronic stuff happening, then in the '80s they started trying to bring back the acoustic stuff, like Branford Marsalis and the Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton sextet. It started dying down from there. Miles was still around in the '80s and he was still being creative; he was playing Michael Jackson songs and changing sounds, but a lot of people were still trying to regurgitate the old stuff.

Your hands learn to do things that you could spend a whole day trying to write about and articulate. There's a discomfort associated with trying to put all those different ways the brain works together. I kind of like to avail myself of that discomfort.

I'm still trying to learn how to do it, I'm still trying to figure out how to make films, but, yeah, it started then [in 1979].

In my early days, fashion was considered a very high risk industry. The failure rate is very high. Trying to get capital and trying to find people who specialize in that industry is very difficult too.

I've done my best, and I begin to understand what is meant by 'the joy of strife'. Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.

Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.

After a lifetime of picking stocks, I have to admit that Bogle's arguments in favor of the index fund have me thinking of joining him rather than trying to beat him. Bogle's wisdom and common sense are indispensable... for anyone trying to figure out how to invest in this crazy stock market.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

If by the expression "not practical" you mean "not easy," you are right. Definitely it is not easy. Yet it should be tried. You may say it is risky trying it. Surely it cannot be more risky than trying a nuclear war.

I'm not very good at sounding like other people. When you're going through your 20's and trying to get a break and that kind of thing, and you're trying to do something that sounds like film music, your idea of what it would be, it never really worked out for me and it's only really when I learned to trust the fact that I could only really sound like me.

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.

We're trying to fill something internal with something external. We're trying to fill something real with something illusionary.

I really do believe that the basic principle that Americans have the right to know what they're buying when they buy it is going to be something that spreads across this country very quickly, and that the food manufacturers would be wise to be leaders instead of trying to block this with lawsuits and other ways of trying to get their way.

You're at your most purest, most innocent, pure state when you're doing something you've never done before. You're scared a little, you're a little vulnerable, you're kind of trying, and then you're also better, because you're trying harder than you maybe would try.

I think any apparent contradiction in scripture is my limited capacity. Me trying to understand God is like an ant trying to understand the Internet. I don't have the brain capacity.

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying — and you have to keep trying — eventually you will come across the next item on your list.

I do talk and think a lot about the legacy before me. I feel like if I didn't know that people had been in Montgomery sixty years ago trying to do similar things that I'm trying to do, with a lot less, with fewer resources, with less security, with less encouragement, with less opportunity - if I didn't know that, then I think doing what I do would be much, much harder.

If I learned one thing, it is that self-doubt is one of the most destructive forces. It makes you defensive instead of open, reactive instead of active. Self-doubt is consuming and cruel. And my hope today is that we can all collectively agree to ban it. . . . Think to the moments of your life when you forgot to doubt yourself. When you were so inspired that you were just living and creating and working. Pay attention to those moments because they're trying to reach you through those lenses of doubt and trying to show you your potential.

Anyone else feel like that? Like your life's a big act. Like you're trying to be a man when you're just a scared kid, trying to keep under control when you really want to scream, cry, or maybe hit someone. Ever feel like you're breathing underwater and you have to stop because you're gulping in too much fluid.