Trying Quotations | Page 3

I've been here 21 years, and I literally did walk up and down Music Row trying to break into the business. I felt very free to go into any publishing company.

I learned from my dad that change and experimentation are constants and important. You have to keep trying new things.

I'm always trying to turn things upside down and see if they look any better.

Don't let fear or insecurity stop you from trying new things. Believe in yourself. Do what you love. And most importantly, be kind to others, even if you don't like them.

Words are powerful. When I make mistakes I just try to come back and clarify what I meant.

Being Mormon is a big part of who I am, and I try very hard to live the right way, but I don't know that I'm an example. I hate to say, 'Yes, look at me. I'm a good example of being Mormon.' I want to be the best person I can be, so in that aspect, maybe I'm a good example.

I'm obsessive about the kind of melodrama of getting through the days and trying to make them good and funny and a happy experience. But my feeling towards the fans is that they delivered me from darkness.

I'm not a diva. I'm a tadpole trying to be a frog.

There's more to life than success, and if you can try to be more well-rounded, you'll be able to enjoy your success more. It won't own you or control you.

I'm just doing the best I can now to keep this going... trying to grow up and remain young at the same time.

I was slightly disappointed, but also encouraged, because I put myself in position to win a major, which is all even Tiger says he tries to do.

Lying about anything is the cruelest thing in the world you could ever do. Be who you are. Don't try to be someone you're not. It never works.

When the media defines something, you have to question: Is it the definition that you want applied to your culture? I'm trying to determine who's leaving the legacy, and if the legacy that is being left is a positive one.

The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.

In trying to scramble out of a hole, it sometimes digs it deeper.

I was meant to be a composer and will be I'm sure. Don't ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football - please.

If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.

I try not to worry about what that's going to look like. If you worry about looking stupid, that's when you look really stupid.

As an actor, we spend so much putting the mask on and trying to be someone you're not.

Trying to describe something musical is like dancing to architecture, it's really difficult.

I attend to my fitness. I go the gym every day and try to maintain my physical fitness; without that, it is tough to take challenges on the chess board.

I'm trying to appeal to the disenfranchised everybody, not just specifically gay.

It's easier to do Shakespeare than Spelling, and I know that sounds crazy, because the challenge of Shakespeare is living up to Shakespeare, living up to that word, not failing, you know, where with Aaron Spelling it's like, just try to look good. Or maybe don't use Spelling there, that's bad. No - you can. He's dead.

I don't spend time wondering what might be next; I just focus on trying to savor every day.

I'm a bit of a goofball; I don't have a lot of censors and I don't have a lot boundaries and I'm trying to remember that the world is watching.

When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.

Everybody was in struggle, in the grind trying to make it.

If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.

I think the problem is that there has been a kind of backlash against feminism. I think women just didn't really see themselves winning that fight, and I think that probably led to a lot women feeling trapped in a perpetual cycle of disappointment - trying to be feminists and failing to be.

I was in the Pritikin Center in Santa Monica once, trying to lose 30 or 40 pounds in a month. I'd work... on a treadmill and with the weights, but it was driving me nuts. So I escaped. Tom Arnold picked me up and we went to Le Dome and had tons of desserts.

Everyone at home thought I was nuts when I said I wanted to be an actress, and I'm sure they were just trying to protect me from disappointment.

When I tour, it's like, well, like a food tour as much as a comedy tour. I try to eat at all the weird places, the obscure barbecue joints, burger places. There are a few spots in L.A. that I'm obsessed with - one of them is the Taco Zone taco truck on Alvarado. There are secret off-menu items that are amazing.

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge'... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, trying to understand the mysteries of the world.

I worked every day - Christmas Eve, birthdays - trying to become a great basketball player. Everywhere I went, I had a basketball.

I'm trying to assemble materials for a different mode of life.

My entire history with the Navy have been trying to get the Navy to focus on families and child care and all the things that they were way behind in - housing, all of those things.

My faith is in my colleagues. And when I meet other writers, journalists, who've been doing this for a long time, trying to make us aware of what it is that we're living in, I put my faith in those people.

There is little or no point being chair of the Labour Party and being ignored when engaging with Labour ministers when you're trying to articulate something that affects ordinary people in society.

Every different social group that I encountered had its different set of rules, so you learn very quickly how to pick up the nuances and change yourself accordingly. When you are not from anywhere, you have to try to find what's universal. You are always trying to fit in.

When I was a kid, I went through the whole process of reading great literature and trying to be very widely read.

The most important thing, in anything you do, is always trying your hardest, because even if you try your hardest and it's not as good as you'd hoped, you still have that sense of not letting yourself down.

I found I am not an anarchistic form creator; I'm intuitive, and I'm trying to figure out a way to explore human fragility.

The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras.

When you're younger, the mental strain of being a successful actor, jumping from role to role, and trying to have some kind of personal life, can really be terrible.

You have Showtime, you have AMC, you have all of these, you know, incredible networks that are now bringing forth their product without the handcuffs, if you will, of trying to sell soap to the entire country.

In Asia, it is very hectic - there is no overtime, no holidays, no weekends. It's pretty rushed because they are trying to cut the deadline.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

Working in Washington, trying to make a difference, that was a very meaningful time for me, a period of personal growth.

I start looking for adjectives in news reporting, and if there are too many of them, if they're all sort of repeatedly designed to influence my thinking in a certain way, I start getting concerned. I'm leery of people trying to paint a picture in a certain way.

There's never going to be a decathlon that you're going to have 10 events that your satisfied with. You're always, always going to be dissatisfied in something, and that always draws you back to try to retry that the next time you do a decathlon. It's like you go for the perfect 10.

Fantasy has had some problems with being too repetitive, in my opinion. I try to read what other people are doing - and say, 'How can I add to this rather than just recycle it? How can I stand on Tolkien's shoulders rather than stand tied to his kneecaps?

I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.

Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.

In college, I took an acting class as a lark. I was surprised by how much it interested me. It seemed like something I could do my whole life and always try to get better at.

I talk to student-athletes. I try to get them to remember that they're not just athletes, but student-athletes. You need to get an education, keep your hands clean and try to represent the university.

No, I try not to be a negative thinker.

I always try to be a reliable friend.

It's the relationship I have with the world: always trying to escape from reality. I'm a daydreamer; I don't feel in harmony with my epoch or the societies I live in.

Think of a pitch in terms of advertising: You're trying to hook a reader the way a commercial tries to hook a detergent user.

The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, trying to take this seat from which we have done so much for our community - to take this seat and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant and very anti-Hispanic.

'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.

For many of us, especially women, the gap between what we want or need and what our society expects of us is wide indeed, and we spend out lives trying to negotiate it. Trying to balance work and family, responsibilities and desires, all that stuff. It is not easy.

I was a problem child, and problem children do the seemingly insane because they are trying to find out how to fit into the scheme of things.

I joined the after-school club, School of Comedy, which progressed wildly, and in quite a Hollywood way. It sounds like 'School of Rock', right up to trying to raise money to pay for a venue in Edinburgh.

Being yourself is the most important element for me, because, if you're trying to be something you're not, the audience will pick up on that.

Parents are trying to be friends with their kids rather than draw the line and tell them what proper public behavior would be.

Because I'm not trying to throw people any curves.

I just want to be remembered as a person who loved God, who served others more than he served himself, who was trying to grow in maturity and stability.

To get into another person's mindset and what they are trying to do with their project is a challenge, and it is what I like.

On 'Supernatural,' you go to a location and another location, and every week they do amazing things up there. You have to kind of hit the ground running and really start to look to the core of the story you're trying to tell.

As a child, people were always trying to photograph and film me because it's a way for a shy person to find themselves.

A flapper is just a little girl trying to grow up - in the process of growing up.

A departure from the movie with Michael J. Fox, 'Teen Wolf' tells the story of how a group of angsty teens deal with werewolves, their supernatural kin and the world of trouble that comes with it, all while trying to still live their lives.

In trying to make something new, half the undertaking lies in discovering whether it can be done. Once it has been established that it can, duplication is inevitable.

'Twisted' is similar to 'Pretty Little Liars' in that it's about trying to find out who did it, but it's more about the human relationships between characters and the strain that things can put on them. It's also a little bit of a social commentary piece, because it covers very timely issues.

Losing Michael Jackson is a handicap. It's the Lakers trying to win a championship without Kobe Bryant.

I lost a dear friend of mine from a rugby injury at 26. We don't usually deal with mortality at that early age and it's given me an appreciation of time, of trying to fit everything in.

Even if I stumble on to the absolute truth of any aspect of the universe, I will not realise my luck and instead will spend my life trying to find flaws in this understanding - such is the role of a scientist.

I'm a loser on Sunday. Yeah, I'm a couch potato. I get up and try and eat and then back on the couch. And watch anything.

I think that we are trying to put data communications, telecommunications and media communications together and be the No. 1 player there.

I like to look put together without trying too hard. I don't want to look as if God's made another rainbow - I prefer muted, autumnal colours, like most fading redheads.

French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.

I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that color is not important. What is important is the quality of our work.

I always use my 'Holy Trinity' which is salt, olive oil and bacon. My motto is, 'bacon always makes it better.' I try to use bacon and pork products whenever it can.

The first rule of management is delegation. Don't try and do everything yourself because you can't.

Even when I was saying I was Agnostic and trying to figure out my thoughts, I felt God was allowing me to do that.

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.

Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.

You may love football, but that doesn't mean you have any business trying to play the sport. It's the same thing with filmmaking... everybody has a great idea for a movie, but do you have the stamina to get good at your craft and deal with how heartbreaking it is?

I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.

One of the first major storylines that 'All My Children' featured was Erica Kane, a rebellious daughter, and her mother, sort of a matriarchal type, who was trying to guide her daughter to a safer place.

I was very young, and I remember this heated, passionate argument and trying to figure out some place called Vietnam, something called a Watergate, and some guy named Gerald Ford who my dad knew who had just become president, and how all these things fit together.

I'm just living each day, and I'm better equipped to do so. I mean, I used to be totally afraid, I used to have, like, permanent stage fright. But now I'm trying to have fun. I'm trying to bring as much happiness to as many people as possible.

There is nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitor.

I'm trying to treat it as a hobby. Making bread and butter as an actor is tough.

I try to develop others. I get a great deal of joy out of helping people who, over the years, I've spent a lot of time mentoring - and just trying to get them to another level.

Companies have been trying to figure out what it is that makes open source work.

I do try to live a normal life.

Why waste time trying to discover the truth, when you can so easily create it?