Divorce is so common and accepted in America that beating myself up over it may sound ridiculous. But I was raised to believe that divorce wasn't an option to me, divorce equaled failure. I wasn't able to change that equation until I found myself in the right relationship.
America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to.
We're born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.
There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel, it's the failure that people project when something disappoints. You're back to ground zero, where there's no expectations, and that's where I like to be.
The biggest problem in my life is trying to be the kind of man that I want to be, the father that I want to be, and how to process the failure of my marriage.
I assume everything I do in life is gonna be a failure, and then if it turns up roses, then I'm psyched.
People in the business will stay with you through drugs and alcohol and divorces and insanity and everything else, but you have a failure, pal, and they don't want to know nothing about you!
War is something Arafat sends others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton's mediation.
The failure of the Russian Socialist Republic will be the defeat of the proletariat of the whole world.
Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
In tennis, it is not the opponent you fear, it is the failure itself, knowing how near you were but just out of reach.
I don't think there's any way it could have failed. We don't know failure in this band. We didn't know failure. We got to know it a little after awhile but at that time there was no such word.
When you experience a failure as a leader, don't hide it - talk about it. Your missed opportunity will encourage others to take risks.
Unwillingness to risk failure is always there, but it gets harder when you feel you have more to lose.
Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.
One must never assume that a character is sympathetic because of either the actor playing them or the fact that they're a lead. I think that's a recipe for failure, actually, because if they become unsympathetic, you lose your audience.
I've always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.
I have always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.
I don't want to feel like a failure to my daughter. She's the best thing I've ever done. Buffy - pretty great and all, but Charlotte's way better.
I'm not scared of anything in particular, but I am motivated by a fear of failure as opposed to a need to succeed.
I failed first grade, which is my biggest problem. You always feel like a failure, like you're stupid.
My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It's about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world.
Failure is the most terrible thing in our business. When we fail, the whole world knows about it.
Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance.
I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.
In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike.
The attributes for entrepreneurs cut both ways. You need the ability to ignore inconvenient facts and see the world as it should be and not as it is. This inspires people to take huge leaps of faith. But this blindness to facts can be a liability, too. The characteristics that help entrepreneurs succeed can also lead to their failure.
I can't say I'm not grateful to have journalists writing about me as a genius. But I know it's not true. I'm not confused. I understand that success comes through a lot of failure and a lot of very embarrassing failure. People want to create the next Facebook, but they are too afraid to create the next Facemash.
Our educational system is not preparing people for the 21st Century. Failure is an essential part of entrepreneurship. If you work hard, you can get an 'A' pretty much guaranteed, but in entrepreneurship, that's not how it works.
Start-ups make so many mistakes that the challenge to identify the root cause of a failure is tough. But believing in your own plan is probably the worst.
Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply.
There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation.
None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature.
Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's a valid part of any endeavour, not just writing.
My Brat Pack buddies and I didn't exactly handle celebrity very well. Success at an early age is far more difficult to handle than failure.