Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.
If I'm flying to China, I can sit and think about a problem. Other scientists have to go to the lab. I'm always thinking about maths, even when I'm doing other things. A lot of the time you're going up blind alleys and it's very frustrating, but then you have a sudden rush of ideas. You can live off that for quite some time.
James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.
The Cul-de-Sac ( French for "dead end" ) ... is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes
I suppose it’s easier to see the way out of anything when you’ve found your way out of that maze. When you’re stuck in the middle, in a series of dead-ends making circles, it’s difficult to make any sense of anything.
I start off but I don't know where I'm going; I try this avenue and that avenue, that turns out to be a dead end, this is a dead end, and so on. The search takes a long time and I have to back-track often.
People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line.
Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.
I think a lot of funds get their ideas from Wall Street. I just like to find my own ideas. I read a lot. A lot of news. I just follow my nose. A lot of times it's a dead end, but sometimes there's value there.
Thinking that what you want equals what's best for you is a dead end.
Real obstacles don't take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze.
The one-word cinema wasn't possible for me anymore. I'd hit a wall, a dead end. Therefore I thought I'd turn back.
I'm sure that in the fullness of time we'll learn that one or more of these seemingly promising technologies were dead ends. And that's the nature of innovation, and that's why we should spread our bets; we should not put our eggs in any one basket. Some of these will be grand successes, some of them will be average, and some of them will be abject failures.
But there is a process that happens when you're making something, be it a musical or a new play. That process takes time, and mistakes will be made along the way, and you will go down and hit dead ends. But it is so public now. Any yahoo with a computer can start a firestorm.
When you work in a culture that thrives on innovation and is constantly moving into unchartered territory, you're going to hit dead ends. But to be successful over the long term, remember what you've learned and move on from it quickly.
Precise adaptation, with each part finely honed to perform a definite function in an optimal way, can only lead to blind alleys, dead ends, and extinction.
Cinema has reached a dead end.
A dead end can never be a one way street; you can always turn around and take another road.
There are no dead ends, just detours.
No straight lines make up my life; And all my roads have bends; There's no clear-cut beginnings; And so far no dead-ends.
The printed page seems to have come to something of a dead end for all of us.
I think you sense the metaphorical resonance of what you're writing without analysing it too carefully. That leads you down dead ends. You stop imagining things and start writing towards these themes.
Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful
There are so many roads you can take that will lead you the wrong way, that nobody will hear your name.
But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.
