Determination will make you find the path to your goals. It will cause you to educate yourself on what it will take to reach your goals. It will move you to take the path less traveled and it will push to do the work that's required to reach your goal.
Humans are kind of story-propagating creatures. If you think of how we spend our days, think of all the time you spend on entertainment. How much of your entertainment centers around stories? Most pieces of music tell stories. Even hanging out with your friends, you talk, you tell stories to each other. They're all stories. We live in stories.
A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.
Live your life. Do the dishes. Do the laundry. Take your kids to kindergarten. Raise your children and your grandchildren. Take care of the community in which you live. Make all of that your path, and follow your path with heart.
I don't need a holiday or a feast to feel grateful for my children, the sun, the moon, the roof over my head, music, and laughter, but I like to take this time to take the path of thanks less traveled.
If I were to be a role model, it would just come out of going the college route, getting training, and trusting that's the most secure path you can take - a path where a degree is involved. You know you went to college, and you have that under your belt.
Most politicians - those people who live, eat and breathe politics - like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn't do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that.
The truth about being a writer is you do not choose the stories you tell, but stories choose you. You do not choose, therefore, characters either. Novels are like dreams you dream with your eyes open; they are books which appear in your head with the same apparent immediateness as they appear in your dreams at night. A writer always writes their obsessions and the truth is that all throughout life we end up writing the same thing in different ways.
We don't just live in books awake and dreams asleep. We are living stories, you and I, with dreams inside us undeniable, with love to give and people to walk beside.
Destiny doesn't control your life, but it does place you on a path. It's how you walk down that path that determines stories I tell.
A lot of times, films tell stories about the time we live in. So when making history, it´s just as important to give the female perspective as well as the male. We need female voices. Take a risk. Be personal.
I want to tell amazing stories that inspire, that bring you out of your reality, give you dreams to be bigger and better than yourself. Hopefully, I can be that conduit.
You don't ever lose your dream. You don't give that up. I tell that to the players. If you don't have dreams, you don't have anything to live for.
I tell people to write the stories that you're afraid to talk about, the stories you wish you'd forget, because those have the most power. Those are the ones that have the most strength when you give them as a testimony.
When you talk about your troubles, your ailments, your diseases, your hurts, you give longer life to what makes you unhappy. Talking about your grievances merely adds to those grievances. Give recognition only to what you desire. Think and talk only about the good things that add to your enjoyment of your work and life. If you don't talk about your grievances, you'll be delighted to find them disappearing quickly.
That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.