A Quote by Elaine May

The only thing experience teaches you is what you can't do. When you start, you think you can do anything. And then you start to get a little tired. — © Elaine May
The only thing experience teaches you is what you can't do. When you start, you think you can do anything. And then you start to get a little tired.
When you're just starting out in the TV business, you don't know anything at all, and you think you're doing a better job than everyone else around you, and you just sort of presume that you're not getting the credit you deserve. And then when you start to get better, the pressure is extraordinary, and then you start to second-guess everything you do, and when people start looking to you for answers, for insight and for analysis and guidance, you start to wonder if you are the right person - even when you have all the information.
Little moments of excitement shape the sound of a record. You don't have anything, and then you start to have little parts that give you the energy to move forward because you start to see something.
Lots of people have asked me what Gracie and I did to make our marriage work. It's simple - we don't do anything. I think the trouble with a lot of people is that they work too hard at staying married. They make a business out of it. When you work too hard at a business you get tired; and when you get tired you get grouchy; and when you get grouchy you start fighting; and when you start fighting you're out of business.
As an older lineman, if you start to sit around, you get stiff. You get tired. Things start to set in.
You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.
There's only so many movies you can do. I start to get really self-loathing and sick of myself. And I think in order to act, you need to live a little bit to fill yourself with experience.
I always like when you start to use something with a little less reverence. You start to use it a little carelessly, and with a little less thought, because then, I think, you're using it very naturally.
I think the most important thing is to have fun, and not to take things too seriously. Once you start doing that, then you'll start to crumble.
As the day goes on you get more and more tired. Even if people say they're afternoon people or evening people, it's always best to start out first thing in the morning with your most important task as opposed to your email, phone calls, or checking the internet. If you start out with that then basically you'll just do that all day long.
I think everybody has a hard time connecting, but as you get older and you want more and you expect more and you know more, it's just different. If you start wanting too much from it without it naturally unfolding, then that makes it bad. If you start not wanting anything, then you are not serious. I mean it's just this conundrum of issues.
It's a little like casting out hundreds of fishing lines into the audience. You start getting little bites, then more, then you hook a few, then more. Then you can start reeling them in and that's a loveliest feeling - the whole audience laughing with you.
I do want to take some time and reinvent and get better and maybe get behind the camera a little more. I do want to direct at some point and start failing really early - start shooting videos and then commercials and then hopefully do some narrative.
It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens, then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all.
I know a lot is going to be on our shoulders, especially the way we're starting games out. We have to start faster; I have to be sharper from the start, and I will be. And I'm confident that if we can get this thing started out a little better each week that we can get on that roll and be tough to stop.
You don't have to try to get a job and go through set steps before you start a career or start your life. That's what I want young girls to know - you can do anything you want. Just start.
I think with success you do get a little more guarded and you start to change your friends. You become more isolated. And you start hanging around with people who have money! I think that's the biggest thing. Once you do get a bit of change in your pocket, you start hanging around with other people who have some change. It was kind of strange to all of a sudden go from one extreme-Manhattan-to where I went, upstate New York. But I did it because I was dying in the city. I couldn't take it. I couldn't take one more dinner party. I couldn't take one more party, period.
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