Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

There’s nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, ‚Well, okay, I’m going to do something of high artistic worth.‘

The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man.

It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

It’s just hard to meet new people, in my position.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

I’m not a good storm-outer… because I forget stuff.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

Losing is not an option in Kolkata. It’s not easy, a lot of players even quit.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

The worst part of success is, to me, adapting to it. It’s scary.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

I’m not a man deeply interested in technology. It eludes me.

‚Unforgiven‘ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‚This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.‘ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

My faith was tested like Job. That’s the message I try to tell other people: just because you believe in God, serve God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, people gotta realize, it don’t mean things not gonna happen to you.

The complexity of things – the things within things – just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

When I make a film – I direct my own film, I write my own script – that’s what I want to hear from the audience. ‚Oh, thank you, Jackie!‘

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

Each year has been so robust with problems and successes and learning experiences and human experienes that a year is a lifetime at Apple. So this has been ten lifetimes.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

We live in a bewildering world.

Nothing is so discouraging to an actor than to have to work for long hours upon hours in brightly lighted interior sets.

Good luck has its storms.

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

After a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.