Quotes About Trying

Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.

[W]hen you're shooting a doc, you're trying to class it up because you can. You know, you're trying to make this feel like cinematic experience. And when you're doing fiction you're trying to do the opposite thing you're trying to take this very artificial experience this very artificial experience and make it feel real and visceral.

People ask me all the time, "What are your influences? Are you trying to do Beckett?" It's like, "No, I'm trying to do me." Whatever that is. I don't know what that is, but that's the basis. I'm trying to be true and I'm trying to be honest.

Essentially, if our secrets are secrets because we are told to be ashamed, then we must share them. There is no shame in being sad or struggling or trying to heal. We are all desperate, depraved and sacred. We are all terrible and brillIant. I can list all the things that can make a girl want to escape her own body (re: patriarchy). But I’d rather list all the things that make me want to stay in my body, and adorn it like a home, rub oils into my skin, tell it how sorry I am for trying to leave, for trying to hurt it into submission

Look at Obama - he is now [2015] trying to help us environmentally but he should have done it eight years ago. He's trying to salvage his legacy and trying to do something good but we needed for him to show leadership from day one.

I'm not out there trying to get press for myself nor am I trying to convince anybody that I'm living any kind of a life. I'm actually trying to convince people: I don't want you to know what I'm living, because it's none of your business.

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.

Three explanations dominate speculation about what Obama is up to. The first is that he's trying to lay the groundwork for his successor, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The second is that he's trying to pad his legacy. The third is that he's trying to 'troll' or bait the GOP into debating his agenda rather than pursuing its own. All are plausible, and none necessarily contradicts the others.

I don't get the impression that most sources of media - like television and movies - are trying to get out a positive message, necessarily. My impression is they're trying to get a message out that promotes their personal opinion, position or belief and they're trying to do something that makes money. They want to turn a buck.

We think we need to create ourselves, always doing a paste-up job on our personalities. That is because we're trying to be special rather than real. We're pathetically trying to conform with all the other people trying to do the same.

I don't know what people think they're trying to do with literary novels, but they're trying to do something. They're trying to change the world, although that's so crazy. That's just delusional. But I recognize that it's crazy. It will be a little dinky change.

Learning a [skateboard] trick is kind of like a puzzle; you have to keep trying, and trying, and trying, and adapting and changing, and adapting and changing, and finally it works.

Sometimes you can press a little bit and you're trying to do too much and you're trying too hard. You want to win so bad and you want to help the team so badly that you end up trying too much instead of letting the play come to you.

Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to think and without trying to stop it. That is practice.

I'm finding that knocking at their mindsets is hard work. A simple knock will not make it crawl. I was trying to push it. I was trying to find a bird's eye view where I could find a big solution. So this is what I was trying.

I used to get defensive and react. Like you, I get pushed and pulled [backstage].... Sometimes people are rude to me, and I feel like, 'You know, guys, I'm just here trying to do my job....' And the reality is, everyone else is just trying to do their job...and sometimes they get on a power trip [and] you feel disrespected. But that's their problem. It's not my problem.

I'm trying to discover - invent, I suppose - an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way. I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples.

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.

Testing by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often. What you eat before you step onto the scale determines how much you will weigh, and the software development techniques you use determine how many errors testing will find. If you want to lose weight, don't buy a new scale; change your diet. If you want to improve your software, don't test more; develop better.

If I had been trying to take the job away from him in a sneaky, underhand manner, then I deserved all I got. But it was the other way around. I was trying to get him the job.

I encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.

I don't like movies that are trying to preach and trying to tell you how to feel.

For all of my life, I've had this one song in my head, and I'm still trying to write it. I'm still trying to get that song out. I'm getting closer, every record I get a little bit closer to saying it the way I want to say it.

To me, getting up every single night and trying to reach out to an audience, and trying to dig deeper and further in the play to serve the writer and to understand yourself in that context is how you continue to grow and learn.

In my movies, I'm not trying to erase any old image of myself, really. And also I'm not trying to imitate anyone or follow in their footsteps, because I know, Burt Reynolds was just one of the people that told me this, I know how you can only last in this business if you got something special to offer, just by being yourself.

Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.

Trying to make order out of my life was like trying to pick up a jellyfish.

Writing style is something is a consequence of who you are. I think that I had a certain propensity for a style that I recognize in my early work, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to learn certain basics and the longer you write the better you get. The rhythms come from you. If the rhythm seem to echo the music, then that's delightful if people see that, but it's certainly not something that's intentional on my part. I'm trying to be as clear and precise as I can be and at the same time, I'm trying to be eloquent and witty and entertaining. I mean, writing should be a pleasure.

This world is filled with things that will never make sense. Trying to make so much sense of them will only result in one thing: Spending the rest of your life trying to remember what you were like before any of it mattered.

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.

There's no more of an excuse for blaming other people or the world for at least not trying what you should be trying.

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

What does it mean that social structures among young people are so often predicated upon trying really, really hard to appear to not-be-trying?

But how can you understand a war without any knowledge of the society where it happens? It's like trying to understand birth without knowing anything about pregnancy or conception. Or like trying to understand our current economic collapse without knowing what a derivative is.

I'm not trying to take more of the pie for myself. I'm trying to make the pie larger for everyone.

I am somewhat influenced by the years that I've spent trying to actually get things done, whether it was reforming education in Arkansas or a survey and Legal Services Corporation board when President [Jimmy ]Carter appointed me and trying to get lawyers for poor people. I have worked in these areas. I know it's more than just a hope. You've got to translate it into a policy that leads to action.

I was never trying to be experimental or anti-anything; I was always trying to be real to things I was feeling.

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.

I think that the process of trying to become somebody else, and obviously the director/actor relationship in trying to do that, is such a weird, undefinable thing.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

I feel like I need just to keep trying to make the work for the right reasons. I think part of that is working with really good people, and just trying to make strong truthful work. And not being diverted from that.

Half the trouble in the world arises from men trying to anticipate their time and season, and the other half from their trying to prolong them.

The good thing about life is that you can research anywhere you are. I'm just constantly gathering little bits of information all the time. I'm always grabbing something out of the headlines, out of the news or reading a book about astronomy and just trying to figure out how to get my head around the facts but the bigger stress is trying to connect those facts to normal life situations and our relationship with God.

I'm trying to figure out a way to find comfort in my life as a human. I'm trying to be good at being a human being. You get chopped up. Someone breaks your heart, you lose your job, you get disappointed, someone dies in your family. Life chops you up, and you have to go on.

Nobody is trying to save energy. We're trying to shift our use of fuel. Forget saving energy; if we get the right kind of energy, there are endless amounts.

I'm not just trying to be a good game manager. I'm trying to be great.

The trouble with most of us is that we stop trying in trying times.

trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell.