You can only be the great artist for so long - come out with effort after effort that garners all this praise.
But the effort, the effort! And as the marrow is eaten out of a man's bones and the soul out of his belly, contending with the strange rapacity of savage life, the lower stage of creation, he cannot make the effort any more.
Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.
She had taken him for granted, she thought with surprise and shame, watching the flickering candlelight. She had assumed his kindness was so natural and so innate, she had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each of them from the other. Any effort to accept the loss of his family with equanimity. Any effort to remain cheerful and calm in the face of his own dying.
She had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each one of them from the other.
I've never made any effort to hide what happened. I served my time, I've tried to learn and move on.
I believe that any intelligent person who reads the evidence will come to the same conclusion about 2004 election results . But one will never be able to prove it to an absolute certainty because the votes were never counted in Ohio as the result of an illegal effort by public officials to derail the recount. Even if you do not believe that the election was stolen, there is no dispute that the Republicans made a deliberate, concerted effort to tilt the results in their favor.
You'll never see me in any of the tabloids because I've made a conscious effort to stay out of that. I'm not interested in fame. I'm interested in hard work and letting my work speak for what I do. I've been in high-profile shows but you don't see stories on me because I don't go out and court them.
You're not sorry. You could've been here if you made the effort. But when did you ever make an effort for anybody but yourself? You're not interested in any of us or in anything we do. You think if you pay the bills, that's enough, don't you? Money! That's all you know. And all you give us is money. Have you even given us any time?
The highest reward for our toil is not what we get for it but what we become by it. ... Mistakes are not failures. They are proof that we are making an effort. When we understand that, we can more easily move out of our comfort zone, try something new, and improve. ... Improvement demands a commitment to grow long after the mood in which it was made has passed.
Very often, people will come out and say, 'Greeks aren't doing things, Greeks aren't making changes, there's no reform,' That is hogwash. We have made a huge effort. The Greek people have made a huge effort.
I think the most important thing any artist can do is to constantly push themselves and improve their craft.
I never considered myself an artist. I aspire to be an artist, but I never thought I had the depth or substance or gift to be an artist. I do think I have some talent, but it doesn't go as far as being an artist.
I never set out to be a cult cool artist. I always made music that I thought was pop.
I made a lot of mistakes out of the ring, but I never made any in it.
I was never shielded from the realities of what it meant to be an artist and that made me afraid to be an artist because I wanted to know that my life was secure.