Failure is not a crime. The crime is not trying.

Even in a gleefully negative comic there is optimism although it's slightly hidden: It comes out through a comic character's sheer tenacity. He keeps going and trying to find some sort of fulfillment regardless of his perpetual failure record. That's a form of hope a form of optimism. Really hokey I know but it's true.

The vast majority of large scale change efforts fail. Which means that the probability that you have actually experienced a failure and your people know that and are pessimistic therefore about trying something again is very high.

I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as failure as long as I'm trying my best. So I've had a 'blood guts and glory' approach through my whole life.

It's not about failure it's about trying something and risking something for attaining your goal.

My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It's about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world.

The biggest problem in my life is trying to be the kind of man that I want to be the father that I want to be and how to process the failure of my marriage.

I don't have a fear factor. Well not much of one. And I'm willing to risk quite a lot - as a comedian you're always risking a lot. You're risking failure especially if you're improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air. That is quite a risky business.

There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

I don't know the key to success but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing you're not growing.

I can accept failure everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.

While I was trying to save money to go to the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia I ended up getting all of this experience which meant that by the time I had enough money in the bank to go to school I didn't really need to go to school anymore.

When I'm writing I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived you know?

The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.

When you do find humor in trying times one of the first and most important changes you experience is that you see your perplexing problems in a new way - you suddenly have a new perspective on them.

My worst hair experience was when I was trying to relax my hair and my grandmother did it. It went all straight and I looked like a black Bee Gee.

Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.

I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life make observations and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop and my ambitions are different.

One nice thing about being a woman in Hollywood is that the women tend to be very close-knit. All of us writers and directors know each other and cling to each other for safety and support and it's really a completely different vibe than the men experience out here where they're all trying to murder each other.

I had the experience last year of directing my first feature while I had a 1-year-old son and while I was also pregnant so I am now well aware of the difficulties women who are rearing children face when they're also trying to make headway in mainstream of film.

I'm not trying to be romantic. I think you can tell when people are trying to be sexy onstage. When I was doing 'All the Way ' I was really thinking about my wife. People don't know my personal experience but they can tell it's an honest interpretation.