John Irving Quotes

Keep training harder and always challenge yourself.

When I learn martial arts, my master will have me try a punch for a week and he will keep saying, 'No, you don't have it. No, that's not right.' When he finally says, 'Yes, you did it,' it's a wonderful moment. You worked on it. You got it.

There is no royal road to a successful life, as there is no royal road to learning. It has got to be hard knocks, morning, noon, and night, and fixity of purpose.

I try to learn every day and train as hard as I can.

It's not about money or connections. It's the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone.

Success is a combination of effort, talent and hard work. There's got to be hard work and mental toughness. It's not just one thing that gets you there it's an accumulation of things

Writing is hard work, and fun, and requires you to keep your backside in a chair when you would sometimes like to put it elsewhere. So the only wisdom is the advice to keep at it, I guess.

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.

There are no shortcuts. If you feel good, you'll look good, you'll play good. Work hard every day. No matter what your strengths and weaknesses, there's no substitute for hard work.

Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning.

If you are willing to do only what's easy, life will be hard. But if you are willing to do what's hard, life will be easy.

There's few things that get you over your own crap more than working hard.

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

I have to work hard. I'm not naturally great at anything. I have to work really, really hard.

I've never been someone that was sort of blessed with an innate talent of just being able to do things. I had to work at it and learn from mistakes.

I was never the most technical wrestler. But my coaches definitely instilled in me the belief that if you can push yourself and practice smarter than the other guy, you can beat him.

One of the things Mother said to me, 'You want this, you're going to practice.' And I know how to practice.

I was able to really see that connection as a football player where success requires a lot of hard work and effort, physically and mentally.

There are no shortcuts, and you can't wing your way through real hard work. I learned the hard way by not taking auditions seriously when I first came out to L.A. and probably wasted a good seven years.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It's something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, 'How did you get to where you're at today? How did you get to where you're running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?'

I don't have time for easy. Tennis is just hard.

Stay humble, be fearless, and work, work, work, work, work, work.

We're not necessarily going to be more athletic than the other team, but we can outwork them, and we can be tougher than they are.

The hardest part sometimes is when you don't get the reps and you continue to push yourself to learn and understand what's really going on.

It's a learning process, and now I know that even when you don't have a title, or you're not in a main event caliber program, you have to remain 'main event level' and always not allow anything to hinder that.