Life can be about taking chances and finding really great things and yes, failing sometimes. Or it can be about wondering what if because you never dared to try.
—Lauren Dane in Giving Chase
I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I don't have it in me to write but which I hope I can go on trying for.
—Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
If you don't try at anything, you can't fail. It takes back bone to lead the life you want.
—Richard Yates in Revolutionary Road
Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
—Samuel McChord Crothers
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
—C. S. Lewis
For no reason I can explain, I began to discover how little it mattered where you are or what anyone does to you. I was sure that what I had done to get there [imprisoned for draft resistance] was right, and somehow the longer I was there, the better I felt.… I felt filled with love for everyone: everyone I knew and everyone I didn't know; for plants, fish, animals; even bankers, generals, prison guards, and lying politicians—everything and everyone. Why did I feel so good? Was it God? Or approaching death? Or just the way life is supposed to be if we weren't so busy trying to make it something else?
—David Dellinger
You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickels in the machine.
—Flip Wilson
I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God's.
—Lyndon B. Johnson
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
—G. K. Chesterton
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
—Edith Wharton
I'd tried so hard to make a perfect, untouchable life for myself. But trouble finds you. Tragedy finds you. And we keep trying anyway. We hope for the best.
—Katherine Center in The Lost Husband
I see someone who's trying very hard. I see someone who's nervous, but stronger than she knows. I see someone who's worried, but doesn't need to be.
—Ruth Ware in The Lying Game