Tony Kushner Quotes

I've missed before in college and high school. If you miss, you figure out what went wrong and kick the next one.

Literally falling on the ice and having to pick yourself up in front of thousands of people is not an easy thing to do. The thing that you learn is to pick yourself back up, to learn from your mistakes.

One of the by-products of being a perfectionist and constantly trying to improve myself are sobering feelings of low-grade anxiety and a nagging sense of inadequacy. But this is not anxiety without a purpose. No, this anxiety keeps me humble. It creates a healthy tension that serves as the catalyst that drives me to fulfill my limited potential.

Nothing makes you try harder than to be told that you are not good enough or that you simply do not have the skills.

I'm constantly trying to become the best. That's kind of how I'm driven. Sometimes I'm not. I kind of focus on when I'm not than when I am. That's probably something I need to switch.

Win or lose or draw, you always go back and critique your performance and say you could have done things better. Even if I put the guy away in one round, I can go back and say I made a lot of mistakes and need to tighten up. But that's the type of person I am. Improve. Improve. Improve. When I lose I come back stronger than ever.

You're always striving to get better, and I would get in my own way sometimes or stop myself if I felt it wasn't as good as it should be. You're going to fall on your face a couple of times, and the lesson is to get back up.

I don't know if I'm the best of the best. But I did know that if I quit, I wouldn't be.

Failure will never stand int he way of success if you learn from it.

Embracing failure is the most important trait I've developed in my career. I have tried to learn from my failures, and I believe it has made me stronger, more confident and more resilient.

Let me realize that my past failures at follow-through are no indication of my future performance. They're just healthy little fires that are gonna warm up my ass

I move on as quickly as possible. I tend to be really hard on myself anyway, which is great for work ethic and such, but sometimes outcomes are just out of your control and there was nothing you could've done anyway. If I'm at fault, I make note and do my best to try again. "No" isn't really a word I understand.

I often lose motivation, but it's something I accept as normal.

When we face our problems, they disappear. So learn from failure and let success be the silent incentive.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress...so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

You have to fail, man, but you cannot allow failure to stop you from doing what you must do. Failing is just as good as succeeding in a lot of ways. It's how you react to it all. You can react to success the wrong way and be a total failure. Or you can react to losing with your whole heart, learn from it, and be a huge success. In stand-up, I've learned to know when I'm burning it up or when I'm being so-so. That's experience. I learn every single time I'm on a stage.

The best lessons are usually learned from failure. You musn't beat yourself up if you fail - just pick yourself up, learn as much as you can from the experience and get on with the next challenge...The brave may not live forever, but the cautious never live at all.

I would tell anyone, pick the person you love the most, the musician, the actor, public figure, whatever, and watch a bunch of their interviews and find ones where they talk about all the times they've failed, all the times they weren't good enough, and watch those on the regular. It's a very unique type of inspiration. It's almost like spiritual jumper cables for your inner drive.

Failure is an option. It's what you do with the failure that makes you who you are. Our failures mold us. I have failed at several things in my life. What sets some of us apart, is that when we fail, we can't sleep at night. It haunts us until we have our time at redemption.

Whenever I feel bad, I use that feeling to motivate me to work harder. I only allow myself one day to feel sorry for myself. When I'm not feeling my best I ask myself, 'What are you gonna do about it?' I use the negativity to fuel the transformation into a better me.

What is defeat in life? It is not merely making a mistake; defeat means giving up on yourself in the midst of difficulty. What is true success in life? True success means winning in your battle with yourself. Those who persist in the pursuit of their dreams, no matter what the hurdles, are winners in life, for they have won over their weaknesses.

Making mistakes doesn't mean that what you did was a failure, or the wrong take. It was just a 'mis-take.' You need to go back and do another take. In each take there is a lesson.

Anyone who has ever made a resolution discovers that the strength of their determination fades with time. The important thing is not that your resolve never wavers, but that you don't get down on yourself when it does and throw in the towel.

I don't look at failure as death, I don't look at failure as finality. I just look at it and pick myself up and say 'we shouldn't have done that' and move on.