Bill Watterson Quotes

If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.

To get syndicated as a comic strip artist is as likely as winning the lottery.

I tried to do a comic strip. I came close, and I met with Universal Press Syndicate in Kansas City, but ultimately, they did not go with my strip.

I spent 15 years of not being able to get a job creating a role on Broadway.

For how long could we fail until we surrendered?

I was born and raised during Depression Years when we were on County relief and we all went out and we hustled. we worked. I worked in a restaurant, I washed dishes.

... I must begin at whatever pace is possible, to work on the book of my own that i vaguely keep assuming lies at the end of the rainbow. It is after all my rainbow and if I don't do it no one else will...Survival is the secret so you really can't afford to doubt yourself for long because you are all you've got. The only thing to do is to go the limit with it. Exceed.

Many of my biggest business endeavors were failures before they became a success. Some failed for as long as six years before they hit. Everyone around me thought I was crazy. You just have to stay at it.

What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.

Never give up on an idea simply because it is bad and doesn't work.

I like making comics and animation because it takes such a long time. I'm not a runner of the 100 meter. I like marathons. The longer it takes, the better I feel.

I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.

Never take no for an answer. It took me 20 years between the time I wrote my first screenplay and the time I actually got money to direct a movie.

Once I started getting multiple days off in a row, it was a long year for me. That had never happened, and everybody knew I didn't like it.

When you feel that you can't fight it, you just go for it. When it comes to the arts, passion should always trump common sense.

How many more years I shall be able to work on the problem I do not know; I hope, as long as I live. There can be no thought of finishing, for 'aiming at the stars' both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations, so that no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.

If it takes a hundred years, it will be a pity, but I will not cease to work for it as long as I live.

When you start out in comedy, or probably in a lot of things, you want it to happen fast. You don't want to see yourself having to do this for seven years before you start to get some feedback.

People who have escaped from poverty are like old soldiers. In later years they recount the little, amusing incidents that happened infrequently, and conveniently forget the long, unrelieved stretches of misery and boredom.

Even without comparing ourselves to the world's greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them-and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives.

It’s being ready to accept rejection. You can work on a book for two years and get it published, and it’s like you may as well have thrown it down a well. It’s not all champagne and doing interviews with The New York Times.

If a person does this for just a couple of years and discovers that it just isn't for him, that's okay. At least he can move on knowing that he gave it his best shot.

If you are going to do large-scale invention, you have to be willing to do three things: You must be willing to fail; you have to be willing to think long term; and you have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

The easy way is efficacious and speedy, the hard way arduous and long. But, as the clock ticks, the easy way becomes harder and the hard way becomes easier. And as the calendar records the years, it becomes increasingly evident that the easy way rests hazardously upon shifting sands, whereas the hard way builds solidly a foundation of confidence that cannot be swept away.

I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.