Rigorous Practice Quotes

I went to school. I went to Juilliard. You spend 13 hours a day on voice and speech. Now I realize why.

Somewhere in my early twenties I realized I was pretty constantly monitoring myself, judging how I was always falling short, whether it was about not being a good enough daughter or friend, or my appearance, or whatever. I ended up becoming involved with a spiritual path in the yogic tradition, living in an ashram, doing a very rigorous spiritual practice.

I've only half-admitted I'm a professional. I know I am, I've paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I'm acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain.

My dad was my first coach and drove me extremely hard from a very young age.

You can't go to college and develop into an Olympics champion. It takes too much time, too much training.

Nothing is a hobby - each discipline is its own world with its own high standards. Of course, every artist has 'minor works' that they do, but I don't think I have any 'minor disciplines.'

I box 12 rounds a day five days a week.

In college, there never really was an offseason. The season would end, you'd get a week break, and then the hardest time of the year would start. Winter workouts in college were absolutely miserable.

To be a professional tennis player you need to put in these sort of hours.

Mine is just a simple old human story - of one person trying, with great rigor and discipline, to comprehend her personal relationship with divinity.

Dance is a very disciplining career or hobby. I was disciplined at an early age.

To become a classical ballerina, you have to move to New York when you're 12 or 11 and that becomes your life. I just wanted to be good in my company in Charleston and I wanted it to always be part of my life.

What seems to set apart those at the very top of competitive pursuits from others of roughly equal ability is the degree to which, beginning early in life, they can pursue an arduous practice routine for years and years.

It's like running a marathon race. We train all hours of the day. When you are taking a bath, you are thinking of the flight.

My dad drove me to Eindhoven for training at 9am, he slept in the car, it finished at 11am, then we went back and I'd be in school in Almere until 4pm. We did that for four or five years.

If the arm got sore, we went out and pitched until the soreness left - we had to, or we would have been dropped from the team. Nothing short of a broken leg could have kept us out of uniform.

With tennis, if you're very good at a young age, you don't even go to your prom. You're down at some tennis academy in Florida where you're on the court 8 hours a day. It's brutal.

As an athlete, I'd average four hours a day. It doesn't sound like a lot when some people say they're training for 10 hours, but theirs includes lunch, massage and breaks. My four hours was packed with work.