Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

If you want to be a rock star, you're not going to just walk on stage. You gotta go practice in the garage until your fingers bleed. I always say that - the same with writing and the same with filmmaking - if it's really your passion, you've just got to stick with it and do it.

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry. If they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere and keep on working until the work is done... I bet there isn't a single highly successful person who has not depended on grit. Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that's what grit allows you to do.

You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf... You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired – it’s hard work.

Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Most people dont understand whats involved. The real writers persevere. The ones that dont either dont have enough fortitude and they probably wouldnt succeed anyway, or they fall in love with the glamour of writing as opposed to the writing of writing.

Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.

I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

In baseball, you've got to keep working.

When things aren't working out, we have a tendency to say, 'Go do other things,' but you shouldn't do other things. You need to stay at your desk and continue to try to write. You need to insist on it.

When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn't I couldn't do my best.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

I think if you want to become a great football player, professional, you must give all the time one hundred percent, you must work hard - to be lucky is a good thing - but if you work hard and you give everything you will have great success.

Hard work - I mean, does anybody use that term anymore? Laziness doesn't fly. It's all in the practice. It does take work and it ain't easy - but man, the rewards!

Musical success depends on how much you enjoy it and how much you are willing to put in. Luck must follow, too.

It's not like I was just dropped onto a snowboard and I was able to go 15 feet into the air. There was a lot of hard work that came with it. That's something that people don't really notice sometimes and the amount of sacrifice my family made.

The key to hitting is just plain working at it. Work, that's the real secret.

Writing day and night for months… that’s hard.

The secret to my success is practice!

Talent is long patience.

The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration.

There are no shortcuts—everything is reps, reps, reps.

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

Success is less about luck, and more about practice.