Diahann Carroll Quotes

Rejection is a big part of show business. It can be tough on anyone who doesn't have fairly good self-esteem. Especially kids, as they try to discover who they are.

Don't take rejection personally.

Not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to want to play you, and that's the business side of it, which I've grown into and I'm certainly not going to take personally.

I remember when I started acting and didn't get a part and was really jealous of the girl who got it. My mom would say to me, "If you don't get a part, that means it's not your part. It's just not yours. You will have your parts." It really recalibrated me at a very young age to where I could be driven because I was trying to achieve things for myself, and that had nothing to do with what anybody else was doing.

You have to continue to believe in yourself, know your value and continue to work on honing your skills. I was rejected by everyone but here I sit. So you have to stay in the game, you can't just fall apart. Hopefully those challenges will make you stronger, it did for me.

Even when I had nothing, I had everything. Because I love to compete.

What other people think of me is none of my business. Sometimes, it hurts my feelings, but I have to just keep going.

I mean, Robert Pattinson. No, I’m kidding, I shouldn’t say that. He’s actually really nice. My neighbour works with him and said he was a great guy. I don’t know to be honest, I don’t really model myself after anybody. You’re always just trying to create opportunities and be ready when those opportunities present themselves. I can’t look at anybody and think ‘I want to be Damian Lewis’ – I’d be setting myself up for failure.

Your agent or manager tells you. They go, "You're out. They're gonna get a new guy." But then I didn't feel bad. I didn't take it personally. Not that I'm competitive at all. But you have pride in that, you know? You want your ratings to be good. But now that I'm 62, I don't really care about the ratings. I don't care about the reviews. I care about the work, and I care about the people that I'm working with, and I try to make the experience for them and myself as good as it can be.

I'd rather be broken than wasted.

If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.

there are only so many ways to get rejected or ignored. It doesn't hurt at all anymore because why should someone who's a complete stranger have any control over your sense of selfworth?

If rejection destroys your self-esteem, you're letting others hold you as an emotional hostage.

I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject.

They say love dies between two people. That’s wrong. It doesn’t die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you aren’t good enough, worthy enough. It doesn’t die; you’re the the one that dies. It’s like the ocean: if you’re no good, if you begin to make a bad smell in it, it just spews you up somewhere to die. You die anyway, but I had rather drown in the ocean than be urped up onto a strip of dead beach and be dried away by the sun into a little foul smear with no name to it, just this was for an epitaph

If you think I'm going to cry all over your chest because you don't feel the same way, you're wrong. I don't beg for anybody's love.

The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you're not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don't take it personally when they say 'no' - they may not be smart enough to say 'yes.'

In 24 years in the movie business, you have a lot of doors slammed in your face, and a lot of people say mean things. Every time, I'm constantly surprised at how the span of time gets quicker that I get okay with it, and I'm over it. That's been an interesting thing to learn.

We all have negative days, but that doesn't mean we are pessimistic. We all do stupid things, but that doesn't mean we are stupid. It's important to be able to distinguish between what happens to us and who we are, and look forward with hope for new and better days ahead!

I had someone very close to me say to me that hopefully I’ll have many more ups and downs, not in just my career but in life. If you don’t have that, you’re not taking enough risks.

Never take no personally. Sometimes people tell you no for a reason that has nothing to do with you. You must keep going.

We always get rejections, whether it's in love or anything in life. And then negativity tends to creep in. But hopefully we are honest towards the people around us so that we can conquer it.

Life was tough for me. When I was a kid, nobody played with me because they thought I looked ugly with my extra thumb. It pained me. So once I thought of getting it surgically removed. But I didn't. Slowly, I realized that the exterior is not the criterion for love and success.

Dismiss whatever insults your soul.

You must not think that I feel, in spite of it having ended in such defeat, that my "life has been wasted" here, or that I would exchange it with that of anyone I know.