Uncertain Success Quotes

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

The first thing I did on television was a PBS thing where I played a priest. It was a Walt Whitman or Carl Sandburg story - I can't quite remember - but I was a turn-of-the-20th-century priest kind of guy. Never saw it; don't know if I was any good or not.

The life of a professional golfer is precarious at best. Win, and they carry you to the clubhouse on their shoulders. Lose, and you pay the caddies in the dark.

The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood. The way it works is that people get an idea you could possibly do something, but there's a one-in-a-hundred chance that it could get made.

I like how steady the work in television is. Films, they're hard to come by. They're elusive. I've done a couple, independently financed. You do them, and maybe a few people will see them.

I went into writing 'The Young Elites' with a great deal of fear - I'd been told repeatedly that a villain's story would be far too dark for young readers to want and that no one would like my villainess, Adelina. I braced myself for epic failure.

The difference is this: If you write a good book, it'll get published. If you have a great screenplay, there is no guarantee.

When you're making an independent film, there is no guarantee that anyone is going to see it, ever.

Something like Shakespeare in Love, which became such an established hit that it now seems like a foregone conclusion... but it really wasn't. The script was around for a very, very long time and had people chickening out all the time.

Hollywood is strange in and of itself. People dress up and pretend to be other people, and you can either make millions of dollars, or no money. It's odd.

You never know in TV - sometimes you're on at the wrong time at the wrong place. Sometimes you don't get a chance to catch on.

If you want to devote yourself to the arts, you'd better do it strictly from passion, because there is zero guarantee that you'll get anywhere. The hardest thing is dealing with business people who have nothing to do with your art. They could care less that you're up at 4:30 in the morning writing a joke. Don't expect any sympathy from anybody.

As our expedition to New York seems likely to be attended with a very fatal Consequence, and ourselves haply censured for undertaking it without assurance of success.

Those books of mine that are remunerative - I'm not talking about poetry here - take years to write, and I am never sure they'll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.