Lin Shaye Quotes

I'm relentless. My mother says I could sell ice to the Eskimos.

I just think a hustler's ambition is that I never stop. I start off hustling and said I'll never stop hustling. An ambitious hustler is the one to hustle the hustlers. When I grew up, my heroes were hustlers. Now I'm their hero.

I think I was probably that kid in the neighborhood who you could expect once or twice a year to be knocking on your door trying to sell you something stupid.

From the time that I was a child, I loved interacting with people. I would go around door-to-door and sell candies and gift-wrapping paper, and it was a great way to interact with people and communicate with people.

To succeed, one must be creative and persistent.

On my best days, I fancy myself a combination of Dad's persistence/patience and Mom's toughness/skepticism.

You do the best you can with what's thrown at you, then you try again.

Because actually it's really hard to get things made. It takes years. To fight the fights you inevitably have to fight, even when you've produced Harry Potter, you'd better have the commitment and the passion to knock down walls, not take no for an answer.

My dad was a ham, too. He could sell those women anything. Of all his sons, I was the only one he could trust to sell as well as he could. I was proud of that.

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it.

I have a mother who never took no for an answer when it came to her creative pursuits. She started a hair salon in her spare bedroom and four years later had 30 employees.

I showed that I can not get frustrated, that I could come from behind, that I can trade, if need-be.

I think by now I have made it fairly clear that I am not very happy with the word hope. I don't believe in people just hoping. We work for what we want. I always say that one has no right to hope without endeavor, so we work to try and bring about the situation that is necessary for the country, and we are confident that we will get to the negotiation table at one time or another. This is the way all such situations pan out even with the most truculent dictator.

When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again.

The best lesson that I've learned from my mother is that she just never accepted no for an answer and I think that's something that has stayed with me.

Entrepreneurs do more than anyone thinks possible, with less than anyone thinks possible.

One of the tests that I frequently use in an interaction is I push on the idea and what I'm looking for is both flexibility & persistence.

Even as a baby I quickly learned to crawl out of my crib. ... They'd put up barriers but I learned how to go over them.

Never give up. The bankers and financial people did not take me seriously initially. Everyone thought I would fail. My attitude was that 'No' is an unacceptable answer when it comes to financing.

The only thing I'll say, and I'm sure everyone says this, is stick with it. I'm not shy about telling people about the fact that my dream was to go to USC film school when I was growing up in New Jersey. I got rejected five times. You just keep going, keep going, keep going.

I quickly learned that if I kept at it and plowed right through the rejections I would eventually get somebody to buy my wares.

I don't give in, I don't give up, I don't take no for an answer.

Be tenacious. One thing that has allowed me to have some level of success is that I am fine with cold-calling people. It doesn't scare me to call someone who has no idea who I am and say I'd love to take you to lunch.

Never take no from somebody who cannot say yes.

Never take "NO" for an answer.