Failure Narrative Quotes

If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?

America has this fascination with glorifying the villain and not talking about the trials and tribulations. We tell the story of the successful villain a lot of times, but we don't tell the story of the people who don't come out so successful, and we don't tell the story of all the bystanders of that choice.

An artist, a man, a failure, must proceed.

Obama isn't just too big to fail. He's too big to know. Obama is so vital to the country and to the world, he must be kept out of the loop in order to save him from his failed presidency.

There is an assumption, in attaching Puritan concepts such as 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' to the awful, final act of suicide, that those who 'fail' at killing themselves not only are weak, but incompetent, incapable even of getting their dying quite right.

A good poem about failure is a success.

There has never been an American tragedy. There have only been great failures.

I tried. But not everybody thought so.

Moralists love to discourse on the hollowness of success; about the hollowness of failure they are silent.

I teach students that what people say about failure in politics is mostly wrong. People always told me, 'They'll praise you on your way up and kick you on your way down.' That wasn't my experience. I can't walk down the street in Toronto without someone coming up and saying hello.

I like going to schools and telling classes that when I was a child, I failed every "will this kid become a writer" test.