A Quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
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Get the advice of everybody whose advice is worth having - they are very few - and then do what you think best yourself.
Failure is not the opposite to success, it's a stepping stone to success. If our primary goal is to be approved of, then we are not going to take risks, we are not going to speak out, we are going to try to blend in.
My best advice to actors is if you love acting, do it every chance you get. Success does not mean success. All that matters is whether or not you're doing your best to entertain. The way this business works is all about luck and timing.
Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting - in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard - reaching for the highest that is in us - becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
One second you're having the time of your life in front of all these people, and then you come backstage to the exact opposite - there's only lukewarm carrots back there.
I took advice from none but the best. I listened, how I listened! That's how I finally became my own expert.
For the best part of 40 years she had genuinely believed that not doing things would somehow prevent regret, when, of course, the exact opposite was true.
Humans were my study animal now - I set up night watches on them, and I made phonograms of the noises they make. I studied their cries, and their contact calls, and their alarm signals. I never listened to what they were saying - I watched what they were doing, which is really the exact opposite of the Freuds and Jungs and Adlers.
I was very fond of Princess Diana. She used to have me over to lunch to ask my advice. I'd give her good advice, and she'd say: 'I entirely agree. Paul, you're so right.' Then she'd go and do the opposite.
Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you're expecting a reward. Most people do the exact opposite: They only take action when they expect a reward, and they don't enjoy the action. And that's the reason why they don't do their best.
Do you think the UFC is going to owe you a favor when you step up on short notice when nobody else is doing it? There's a reason a whole bunch of us aren't doing it. If you want to be that scapegoat, and think that the UFC's going to owe you one, good luck with that. Let me know how that goes.
I enjoy going to campuses and reading and doing a class or teaching and then running away and not having to grade papers.
I haven't looked to my peers for advice because we're all going through the same thing. How do you ask your friends for advice when they're going through the exact same thing?
Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today?all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going?and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success.
With any television series - and it's something that is taken for granted with movies because you have the whole arc within two hours - you establish who the character is and it's a two-dimensional version, or if you're lucky, a two and a half-dimensional character. Once you establish that, you can move forward and break all the rules. Once the audience has accepted who the person is, then you can do the exact opposite. What makes it funny and interesting is doing the opposite.
I'm against a signature look, as that can be very outdating. But having said that, I also know my best qualities, so I'm not going to foolhardily give away my power.
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