A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you’re prepared to take the risk of trying them out.
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you’re trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.
Persistence is incredibly important. Persistence proves to the person you’re trying to reach that you’re passionate about something, that you really want something.
The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.
There is no failure except in no longer trying.
The right moral compass is trying hard to think about what customers want.
I don’t really believe in the mystery of cinematography – what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense – I want the director to see what I’m trying to do.
It’s all about trying to be very careful about what your next role or what your next move is gonna be. It’s all about trying to have longevity in this business and make smart choices.
Trying to force creativity is never good.
To me, the All-Star Game is just another step. I try to take all my experiences and put them together. To make the NBA was something, and then to be recognized as an All-Star – although I don’t consider myself a star. I see myself as just trying to reach my potential as B. J.
We’re all trying to figure out what’s next, what’s best for our families, what’s best for ourselves, and there’s a certain sort of comfort in knowing that you’re not in it by yourself.
Women oftentimes are the ones making those economic decisions, sitting around the kitchen table and trying to figure out how to pay for rising gas prices or food prices or the health insurance costs. And I think that they see where they expect their leaders in Congress to also make those tough decisions.
Hospitality is about trying to support multiple functions in one space.
My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It’s about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world.
I’ve always taken ‘The Wizard of Oz’ very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.
I try to associate myself as just being myself – and being a person, an American citizen, going out there every day and just trying to be successful.
I believe Costco does more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation. I think it’s a better place. You get a bunch of very intelligent people sitting around trying to do good, I immediately get kind of suspicious and squirm in my seat.
As you get older, and this is a young man’s game, and people say, ‘Well, there’s no way I can keep up running the way I’m running; there’s no way my arm is going to stay as strong as it is.’ It’s the challenge of trying to stay in my tip-top shape year in and year out so I can keep playing the way I want to play.
We’re trying to get the SEAL community back to where we think it should be – quiet professionalism.
I’m always trying to do stuff I haven’t done before or challenge myself so I’m not resting on my laurels all of the time because if I just found my little niche and never left it, I’d be pretty boring, I think.
I was trying to pay the bills with poems, and it was easy to memorize my poems, because I’d be riding my bike in California trying to memorize them before going on stage at a poetry lounge.
If Oasis is the sound of a council estate singing its heart out, then the Libertines sounded like someone just putting something in the rubbish chute at the back of the estate, trying to work out what day it is.
I’m trying to get low. People’s personalities can get in the way of their own work.
Your life isn’t about doing one perfect ‘thing’ and then falling down dead. It’s more like going to church or writing a book. You do it over and over, always trying to be a little bit better. Then you die.
I wanted pretty pictures of older women – women who are trying too hard but succeeding – pulling off an extreme look. What I didn’t know would creep into the portraits was a vulnerability behind the strong facade that most of them wear.
I’m a Scrabble nut, and I need something to do while I’m travelling. Scrabble keeps me occupied, I play against myself. I have a high score of 718 that I’m always trying to beat. I’m a good player. You don’t want to play me for money, that’s for sure.
At Tencent, we may be businessmen, but we are still chasing our IT, our science. We are still striving to create something really cool, trying to create things we couldn’t even imagine without our new technologies. I am still clinging to this enthusiasm.
What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.
I’m not trying to steal the show. I tend to shy away from – I don’t want to say the spotlight – how about responsibility? It’s just very daunting. These movies are very intimidating. ‘Captain America.’ This is the stuff I struggle with.
Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.
I like the challenge of trying different things and wondering whether it’s going to work or whether I’m going to fall flat on my face.
If I’ve ever regretted anything, it was putting all my eggs in one basket, holing up and kneeling at the altar of literature, instead of going out and at least reviewing, running around and trying to write for magazines. That would’ve been the intelligent thing to do, but I didn’t, and that was because of fanaticism.
You’re damned if you’re too thin and you’re damned if you’re too heavy. According to the press I’ve been both. Its impossible to satisfy everyone and I suggest we stop trying.
Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
I believe that every single one of us, celebrity or not, has a responsibility to get involved in trying to make a difference in the world. Our generation faces many challenges, some of which were passed on to us by the past generations, but it’s up to us to find solutions today so that we don’t keep passing our problems on.
When the cops are trying to arrest you, if you fight back, things go wrong.
A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.
I like playing sport, and I like doing physical stuff. I like hiking and I like climbing and I like playing sport. I do a lot. But I don’t like the term ‘exercising.’ I feel like with sport, you’re playing games. But with exercise, you’re literally just trying to stop yourself from dying too young. It’s weird.
When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.
The whole character of Super Dave is a takeoff on people who pontificate. So one thing I never want to do is pontificate why this works, why this is funny. I have no idea what the appeal is. All we are trying to do is make people have a good time and laugh.
My dad always taught me never to give up in my mind. You can never really beat me. It sounds ridiculous, but I will always come back for you. You can’t beat someone who never gives up. I could lose 100 times to you, but I will always get you. I will die trying. This applies not only to swimming but to my life as well.
As an attorney, I could be rather flamboyant in court. I did not act as though I were a black man in a white man’s court, but as if everyone else – white and black – was a guest in my court. When trying a case, I often made sweeping gestures and used high-flown language.
I’ve been a big fan always of getting my camera in different places and trying to seek the unusual vantage point.
I’ve had a very full and lovely career so far, and I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever really found myself in a man’s world, struggling for an identity or trying to prove something.
I’m not trying to be new school and I’m not old school – I’m classic. There’s a lot of new cars and there’s a lot of old cars, but I’m just classic in doing what I do.
One reason some people are long-winded is because they’re trying to impress their conversational counterpart with how smart they are, often because they don’t actually feel that way underneath. If this is the case for you, realize that continuing to talk will only cause the other person to be less impressed.
Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty… mine’s putting in an express lane.
All I’m trying to do is to keep going and keep evolving.
I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.
The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.
All we’re trying to do is change how people think about fitness. And build Under Armour into the biggest brand in the entire land.
