A Quote by Alan Arkin

No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right. — © Alan Arkin
No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.
No matter how much you screw up your own life by the wrong decisions that you make, it's never too late to do the right thing and change your ways and you can teach old dogs new tricks.
My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realize I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.
No matter how much you screw up your life, you can fix it.
I've learned that all you can be in this world is you. No matter how much you mess with yourself, with surgery or you know, clothes or cut your hair differently or how much you wish and pray and dream that you're gonna wake up as someone else, it's never gonna happen. You have one life and one opportunity, and all you can be is the best you.
It doesn't matter who the candidates are. It doesn't matter the campaign. You know that's gonna happen. The Washington Post is gonna do it, the New York Times is gonna do it, the three networks gonna do it, CNN's gonna do it, MSNBC gonna do it, all the newspapers are gonna do it. For the vast majority of them. There are some exceptions. That sameness ends up being its own authority. If everywhere you look in the media tells you the same thing, you don't have to research.
To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparation - head down, trying not to screw up, trying to make it from one day to the next - that it is a shock to find yourself at the other end, with someone shaking your hand and asking how much money you want to make.
So much of parenting is following your instincts, and taking the time to actually know your child.
[Everyone needs] a woman who'll listen, take your side, tell the truth - or not, as you need it. A woman you can count on, no matter what, and who'll love you no matter how much you screw up.
Don't get too comfortable. We are here for a certain period of time, and how much of your life are you gonna choose to spend with distractions? How do you make your choices? What is important?
The past doesn't change no matter how much time you spend thinking about it. Good and bad all add up to the whole. Take away one piece, no matter how small, and the whole changes. Whether it's optimism, pessimism or fatalism, I don't spend my time wishing for the past to be different so present would be different, too. I control my future with what I choose now.
Turn off your radio. Put away your daily paper. Read one review of events a week and spend some time reading good books. They tell too of days of striving and of strife. They are of other centuries and also of our own. They make us realize that all times are perilous, that men live in a dangerous world, in peril constantly of losing or maiming soul and body. We get some sense of perspective reading such books. Renewed courage and faith and even joy to live.
I can't tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I'd done so much reading.
If you spend all your time reading books that you only pretend to understand, year after year, there isn't much room for anything else.
You have to be very clear with yourself about how you're going to spend your time. When a child is at school or napping, you need to realize that this is your writing time and you don't spend it surfing the Internet or reading.
But when we find that one person who completes us, we don't give up. No matter how bad we screw up. We make it right.
It doesn't matter how many times you fail. It doesn't matter how many times you almost get it right. No-one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you. All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.
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