A Quote by Eleanor Catton

From the very beginning, I had an ambition for 'The Luminaries': a direction - but not a real idea.

Eleanor Catton

Quote Topics

Ambition Beginning Direction Had Idea Real Very

Quote Author

Eleanor Catton
New Zealander - Novelist
Born: September 24, 1985

I seemed to have instinctually a strong idea of how the strip had to be written from the beginning. That changed too, but it was more in the direction of where it was headed. I didn't have a clue as to the drawing style, because the drawing style that I was groomed on from the beginning was newspaper comic strips, which were much more conventional.

Jules Feiffer

Musically, I have little ambition. The only real ambition I have is to make music and do music whenever I feel like it, without any real ambition or planning.

Floor Jansen

Jo's ambition was to do something very splendid; what it was she had no idea, as yet, but left it for time to tell her.

Louisa May Alcott

The very idea that you can pursue happiness, that you can deserve it, that you can demand it, that you have the right to be happy, is foolish. Nobody has the right to be happy. You can be happy, but there is nothing like a right about it. And if you think that it is your right you will go on missing, because you have started to look in the wrong direction from the very beginning.

Rajneesh

All buoyant leaders are driven by a real ambition- that is, what is being created that didn't exist before- and one criteria for that real ambition, is that on initial inspection, it seems fundamentally impossible.

Kevin Allen

There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

Bertrand Russell

During my career as a standup and actor, I realized it was very frustrating for me to get hired because Hollywood was hiring a different kind of brother, you know, and I was doing political humor... In order for me to really have a long career, I'm going to have to learn how to write and produce for myself... I had no idea I was really going to like it and I'm very fortunate to be successful. But the idea was to always eventually create something for myself. That was the idea from the beginning when I went into writing and producing.

Larry Wilmore

My ambition from the very beginning was to make a good part for myself, something differently to what lately I've been doing.

Harrison Ford

There's a screen direction in the script for the pilot where it says, 'Jim Harper, mid-20s, enters,' and it said something to the effect of: 'He's confident without being cocky. He has no idea that he could be considered attractive, because he saw All The President's Men when he was thirteen and never looked up.' It was just a great little gem of a screen direction, and I felt immediately from just that, that I had a good idea of how to play this guy.

John Gallagher, Jr.

Each child is poisoned by the society through teaching him ambition. Ambition is a poison far more dangerous than any alcohol can ever be, far more dangerous than marijuana or LSD, because ambition destroys your whole life. It keeps you moving in a false direction. It keeps you imagining, desiring, dreaming, it keeps you wasting your life. Ambition means a subtle creation of the ego, and once the ego is created you are in the grip of darkness. And the whole social structure depends on ambition.

Rajneesh

The beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.

Jose Saramago

I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal, I had an ambition to build.

Eden Phillpotts

My first real experience of ambition was as party leader. It was my ambition for Labour to win, in which event I would be prime minister.

Neil Kinnock

That was always what I felt was the beauty of Rock 'n' Roll, it was entertainment and showbiz yet it had the idea of the voice of the people, it had an essence to it which was socially motivated. Not that I want to change to world, you know? But it was sort of relevant to real life, it involved the real essence of poetry or the real essence of fine art. But it was also entertainment. That was the real vitality.

Debbie Harry

I was lucky that I started very young, since I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do. But my father is very conservative, and he never considered fashion to be a real career but something I could pursue as a hobby. He wanted me to be a doctor, and at one point, I thought of becoming a plastic surgeon.