Trying quotes
18.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"I was very active. I was always all over the place trying to do a million things, just into this activity. If you asked me when I was 14 what I wanted to be: "Activist, first, is my occupation. I am an activist.""
"I try not to have a day pass where I don't read something from the Bible. It's like my sustenance to me."
"I think I'm still trying to find my voice as a filmmaker and finding stories to tell."
"These years of the Ecole Normale were an ordeal. Nothing was handed to me on the first try."
"I try to do what has never been done before."
"When I'm writing a book I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result."
"Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it."
"Self-pity gets you nowhere. But insight to see that something can be done with the second-bests and adventurous daring to try might be a handle to take hold of."
"The finest quality of our characters do not come from trying but from the mysterious and yet most effective capacity to be inspired."
"Foreign governments are going to be poring through all these Donald Trump tweets looking for - to try and discern what it means for foreign policy."
"I'm not against anything that anybody might want to try to pull off in fiction. Fiction writing has to, at least, always represent a possibility of absolute freedom."
"Narco fiction novels have a reputation, at least here in Mexico among some of the writers I know, of being somewhat rushed productions, usually written in one way or another like crime thrillers, with something cheesily exploitative about them. It feels exploitive - taking this horrible and ongoing tragedy and trying to turn it into something entertaining. Or trying to turn it into something that might earn the writer a reputation of the sort that many writers believe they aspire to. Or earn them money."
"In the novel, I can change things and simplify, and make events work towards whatever meanings I'm trying to get at more efficiently."
"Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up."
"The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living?"
"I am closer to the pacifist side, in that I think that the British response to German aggression, which was to try to starve the Continent into a state of revolt and to terrorize German civilians with bombing raids, was part of the total catastrophe."
"When he comes into a room, you give a little gasp, deep inside, far inside,' someone once said when trying to describe what it meant to love."
"When I'm writing about complicated subjects, it usually involves a world. It could be the world of Scientology or the world of Al Qaeda, or the world of counter-terrorism.I look for emblematic beasts of burden - what I call "donkeys" - who can carry the reader through this world. They serve a different purpose. Donkeys are not especially interesting or likeable, but they are serviceable. They will take you into this world. The distinction I'm trying to make is: It's not about them. It's about the world."
"We were playing every game to win, we just happened to win 27 in a row. Our motto was to try and go out and win every game, but there's nothing really to talk about."
"My family is happy. That makes my job a lot easier. For the fans, I try to put it all out there on the floor."
