Jake Tapper Quotes

Much can often be learned by the repetition under different conditions, even if the desired result is not obtained.

Depending on what happens with my directing career, I don't think I'll stop writing, even if I crash and burn in movies and TV. I'll go back to plays. Even if I crash and burn there, I'll write a novel. That's the great thing about writing is that you don't have to wait for people to give you permission to do it.

Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

You can't really go into TV thinking, 'Maybe I can make a few bucks doing this thing I'm only kind of interested in to support my one true love, which is prose fiction.' I think you have to love what you're doing to do it well.

Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.

You have to do it and do it, until you get it right.

The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic.

My interest in community is what fuels my work as a writer, more than just wanting to write or just wanting to have a TV show.

It's very lucky to be able to do a job where I get to sit about writing plays all day and going to the theatre. The downside, I suppose, is that you put it out there, and people are invited to like it or loathe it.

Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.

I know I'm not going to book everything I go in on, and that's just the nature of the business. You have to keep hustling and not get down on it. You have to keep at it and find your way in. Everybody's story is different.

Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out. You try something, and it doesn't work, and it takes confidence to say we haven't failed yet... Ultimately, you become commercially successful.

Unless you're willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won't happen.

Yes, we're trying some new stuff. Some of it might work. Some of it might not. This, of course, is the nature of episodic television. They can't all be gems.

Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won't publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.

I've never thought I wanted to quit in my research. I would always fail in experiments, which I did at least three times a day.

It may take hundreds of pages before you begin to get a handle on the craft of writing, and your first scripts may not work. The next five to twenty may not either. However, the ones that do work owe everything to the ones that didn't.

I want to go wherever there's great work. I'm a huge fan of film primarily. But you can get a great TV show and get attached to it. Making a great film is forever, though, so I always want to be part of film. It's my first love.

It would seem that the ant works its way tentatively, and, observing where it fails, tries another place and succeeds.

If you give up at the first rejection or the first bad review, you will never make it in publishing.

I kept sending out stories and getting rejected.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

Almost nothing works the first time it's attempted. Just because what you're doing does not seem to be working, doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that it might not work the way you're doing it.