Kept Trying Quotes

#1. It is hard to open yourself to someone who might really love you. I kept trying to drive Ken away and he kept passing the test by staying.

Erica Jong

#2. I'd wanted normal so badly. No werewolves. No second sight. No weird pull on men. Yet, I knew I would never be normal. I would never have a normal date. I kept trying to mold myself into something I could never be.

Melissa Haag

#3. They locked her up and kept trying to break her. But she kept coming back, and do you know what I think?" "No." "She got stronger each time.

David Lagercrantz

#4. It is impossible for those who tried and kept trying to fail. How can they fail when they have not given up in the task?

N.K.David

#5. I kept trying to talk myself out of my second thoughts when they were trying to help me. My advice? When it comes to relationships, second thoughts should be promoted.

Deb Caletti

#6. That night,I lay on my side,staring out the window into the invisible world outside.I kept trying to fall asleep,but then my eyes would dart open,just to check.I couldn't help but hope that Margo Roth Spiegelman would return to my window and drag my tired ass through one more night I'd never forget.

John Green

#7. I didn't fit.
I was a different size, a different shape. I kept trying to squeeze into a body, a skin suit, that was too small. It rubbed me the wrong way. I blistered. I callused. I scarred over and it kept hurting. I would never fit.
But, really, I didn't want to fit. That's why it was hard.

Laurie Halse Anderson

#8. I never thought about being No. 1. I just kept trying to be No. 1.

Jack Nicklaus

#9. I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.

Patrick DeWitt

#10. Her mother ... told Kate that after women got out of lousy marriages, they generally had the good sense to stay away from the institution altogether. While men just kept trying to get it right because they were incapable of being alone.

J. Courtney Sullivan

#11. I've been left for someone ... all those things ... It was sometimes a surprise, and sometimes you saw t coming. The most painful was when I kept trying to get someone back. But we all make dumb mistakes.

George Clooney

#12. The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.

Francine Prose

#13. What if you had such severe schizophrenia that your life was just one hallucination after another? And what if people kept trying to drag you back out of those hallucinations, to prove that you weren't living in reality and that reality was nothing more than a psych hospital? Would you go?

Jonathan Harnisch

#14. You see, here's my theory: Kids chase the love that eludes them, and for me, that was my father's love. He kept it tucked away, like papers in a briefcase. And I kept trying to get in there.

Mitch Albom

#15. When I was young, I kept trying to be in the most helpful place for me, when sometimes, as players, you have to look in the mirror and say, "It's not always going to be comfortable."

Drew Gooden

#16. I was me. I thought what I thought. I liked what I liked. And I didn't hide much of anything. Life was exhausting enough with all the ups and downs and bullshit people kept trying to feed you. Expending that kind of effort for essentially no purpose seemed a ridiculous waste of energy.

Kristen Ashley

#17. So many great movements didn't succeed the first time, but people kept trying and trying and trying.

Cory Booker

#18. I knew I loved you when I kept trying to run away and find reasons why it wouldn't work

John Geddes

#19. And as he held his first true lover against him, feeling that familiar difference in their heights and smelling that wonderful cologne, part of him wanted to debate this break up until they both gave in and kept trying.
But that wasn't fair.

J.R. Ward

#20. When I got to the end of this play, I realized I was trying to make Angel do something that had not been justified by the characters and by their story ... I kept trying to force it, but that doesn't work. So I had to come to terms with what it meant for me to create a character who doesn't triumph.

Pearl Cleage

#21. When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.

Nick Tosches

#22. Aaron Spelling kept trying to bring vampires about, and I feel badly that it happened so much later. He was ahead of his time, in that regard.

Brigid Brannagh

#23. When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget ... So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

Katherine Paterson

#24. In the beginning it was always the same. But. I kept trying. Then one day I accidentally moved as the shutter clicked. A shadow appeared. The next time I saw the outline of my face, and a few weeks later my face itself. It was the opposite of disappearing.

Nicole Krauss

#25. I assigned him to help me trim the Brussels sprouts, but instead he kept trying to throw them away when he thought I wasn't looking.
Brussels sprouts, Grace, really? These are our friends. Why are you doing this to them?

Alice Clayton

#26. In Russia, meanwhile, dedicated young people kept trying to kill the tsar.

Ian Frazier

#27. Roland had sworn off children - they kept trying to kill him.

Ilona Andrews

#28. It is impossible for those that tried and kept trying to fail. How can they fail when they have not given up in the task?" N.K.David

N.K.David

#29. ... none had been outside Russia. I kept trying to remember something that I had read about a species of fish that was born, lived, spawned, died in the dark waters of a cave; and were blind.

Martha Gellhorn

#30. Everyone seemed to be deliberately not looking at her, the way people did when you had food in your teeth and they didn't want to tell you, so they kept trying not to see.

Liane Moriarty

#31. I kept trying to tell people that just because I was young didn't mean I could speak for all young people.

Joe Biden

#32. There
was never
enough alcohol
to keep my mother warm
in a house
as cold as
t h i s.

- but you kept trying, didn't you?

Amanda Lovelace

#33. ... I kept trying to run away. And I almost did. But it seems that reality compels you to live properly when you live in the real world.

Kenzaburo Oe

#34. The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.

Danielle Steel

#35. I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

Anita Diament

#36. I was an adventurer, and I got married a few times. I kept trying to find a relationship as good as my parents'.

Jacki Weaver

#37. I think Nouveau Gloaming is a classic black metal record and I would hate to be a band that kept trying to recapture the same essence, but failing, for the rest of its days.

Mat McNerney

#38. Even going to college, getting my degree in Radio TV and Film, as I was approaching the time when you have to decide on a major, I kept trying to figure out what would be the best major to enhance what I am doing as a performer.

Jeff Dunham

#39. If I kept trying to be what everybody wanted, I'd soon be insipid enough to fit in everywhere.

Barbara Kingsolver

#40. He had an opinion of himself, I think, that was too high for his own good. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe it was a low opinion that he kept trying to erase.

Tim O'Brien

#41. Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying.

Sonya Hartnett

#42. I'm really not a partisan political person. I remember when I was in Washington they kept trying to get me to say whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. I just said, my politics are children. That's all I know anything about.

Edward Zigler

#43. I walked out of the classroom and felt like dancing and singing. It all gave me hope. It gave me a little bit of joy. And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That's the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change

Sherman Alexie

#44. I'm one of the most optimistic persons in the world. I always believed that - there's another shot, another chance. In boxing, I never gave up. I kept trying, kept trying. Even when things seemed so dim, I continued to push forward to make something happen in my favor.

Sugar Ray Leonard

#45. I was trying to daydream but my mind kept wandering.

Steven Wright

#46. I've kept my sanity in this business by trying out for a role and then going home and trying to forget about it.

Blythe Danner

#47. You may be right. There may be no one greater than you or me. But that 'blind faith' kept me alive, and if you ask me, you're no different. If you've truly given up, why do you keep trying?

J. Kowallis

#48. I'd be happy to be taken as a woman - and that's what I was initially trying to do when I started throwing on dresses and stuff. But that wasn't going to happen because everyone kept calling me sir. So I thought I'd change the method and just start wearing what I wanted to wear.

Eddie Izzard

#49. Hoped if she kept the dream hidden and frozen
She soon would forget that she'd never been chosen.
But dreams screams as loud whether thriving or dying
And Helen despite herself never stopped trying.

David Rakoff

#50. I was trying to be a clinical psychologist for years. But I kept getting stuck in comedy.

Amy Hoggart

#51. People were desperately trying to fill their seats for the summer. And so prices are really low right now. And so they are kept from raising prices to make up for that difference.

David Neeleman

#52. Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

Charles Bukowski

#53. Nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love, and it would be wrong to try to find anything ... It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; he does not fill it, but keeps it empty so that our communion with another may be kept alive, even at the cost of pain.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#54. I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand.

Carol Rifka Brunt

#55. there was still a part of me that kept waiting for it all to go to hell. At least I'd stopped poking at it and trying to break it myself, that was a step up. Let's hear it for therapy and smart friends who intervened when I fell back into old destructive habits.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#56. The irony kept hitting him. Yasmin had left because he couldn't give her anything she wanted. Harper had left because he was trying to give her everything.

Scarlett Cole

#57. When I joined the trio, it was as if I was capable of driving a sports car at 60, but Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson just kept pressing the pedal down, and I was trying to control the car at 80!

Barney Kessel

#58. Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.

Salman Rushdie

#59. Microbes are just nature's janitors who work to clean up a poorly kept culturing medium. Trying to keep microbes off of and out of your body is like trying to keep the wind out of the trees.

Robert Morse

#60. It looks like a marathon. And I'm proud that I'm not a DNF (did not finish). I'm not a DNF yet. I just kept going. I think that's been the key is just to keep going and really try to get better and try to be as truthful as I can and hope that good things come my way.

Jennifer Beals

#61. I didn't want to be known as the reality-show star trying to be an actress, so I kept a lot of the failed auditions to myself.

Jamie Chung

#62. To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.

Joan D. Vinge

#63. I thought I would try my hand at sailing. It was too small and kept sinking, so I decided to try a boat instead.

Arthur M. Jolly

#64. I tried once, you know, went to a dance all dressed up, but I felt like such a fool. Everyone kept making encouraging remarks about my looks as if they were afraid I'd cross back over the line again; I was trying, you know, I was proving their way of life was right, and they were terrified I'd stop.

Joanna Russ

#65. I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.

Ernest Hemingway,

#66. Before, when I was ordered to consider him intelligent, I kept on trying to and I considered myself stupid for not seeing how intelligent he was; but the moment I said, "he's stupid," but said it in a whisper, everything became quite clear.

Leo Tolstoy

#67. The box filled gradually around them over the next half hour. Mr. Weasley kept shaking hands with people who were obviously very important wizards. Percy jumped to his feet so often that he looked as though he were trying to sit on a hedgehog.

J.K. Rowling

#68. ...but she kept on, trying to reshape the ugliness.

A. Lynn

#69. I kept asking God for help, and after a while I realized something
that Josh was not enjoying this either. He was just trying to take care of himself, and I made the radical decision to let him off the hook.

Anne Lamott

#70. In trying to imagine this world, I kept coming back to Michel Aflaq. He's a Christian Arab, a Syrian, who ends up finding his home in Iraq and is buried there - I was stunned to see his tomb is right smack down in the Green Zone.

Elliott Colla

#71. But the expression that just past over her face said it all. Anita was trying to forget something dreadful, something that just kept on pushing itself to the surface of her mind no matter what she did.

Dana Reed

#72. My dreams kept me trying when I could have quit.

Arthur L. Williams Jr.

#73. I was fighting a small fight of my own which wasn't leading
anywhere-but like a man with a bent spoon trying to dig through a cement wall I knew that a small fight was better than quitting: it
kept the heart alive.

Charles Bukowski

#74. I try to paint from life, but I had such a miserable experience with Bonaparte, who wouldn't sit still and kept mumbling about catching a cold and something incoherent about Wellington , so I finally decided to work from photos.

Roman Genn

#75. While you're in the moment of anything that's confusing in your life, you're in the moment, and you have to figure it out. You can go up or down. And I just kept working on the higher road, and trying. I got very involved with medication.

Linda Blair

#76. I was going to shave it. It went in two parts. I got a bob first but it kept falling all over my face. Then it was off, short. The main reason it was long was because my mother cut it short when I was little and I was trying to make up for that.

Cathy Freeman

#77. I kept pushing against the black, though, almost a reflex. I wasn't trying to lift it. I was just resisting. Not allowing it to crush me completely. I wasn't Atlas, and the black felt as heavy as a planet; I couldn't shoulder it. All I could do was not be entirely obliterated.

Stephenie Meyer

#78. Kung fu was made so the monks could train their bodies and move their bodies with strength, so they could be physical enough to gain mental enlightenment. Before that, they kept falling asleep when [masters] were trying to teach them.

RZA

#79. And he listened to me. That was the thing he did, as if he was trying to fill himself up with all the sound he could hear. He listened to the wind and the falling ocean and my voice, always with rapt attention, a concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and kept only the sounds.

Ray Bradbury

#80. The hardest thing on 'Palo Alto' was letting go because I kept working on it, trying to make it better.

Gia Coppola

#81. I think a part of the reason that those early plays were short was that I just kept having these ideas, and I'd just go off and write them. I wasn't trying to write one-act plays - it's just how the ideas would be expressed. Every condition I was in seemed like it could be a play.

Sam Shepard

#82. Were the Founding Fathers wise and just men trying to achieve a good balance? In fact, they did not want a balance, except one which kept things as they were, a balance among the dominant forces at that time.

Howard Zinn

#83. That no one, no one at all, should try to search into himself! But the wallet of the person in front is carefully kept in view.
[Lat., Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere, nemo!
Sed praecedenti spectatur mantica tergo.]

Aulus Persius Flaccus

#84. When I was about 15. I was just singing around, and people kept telling me I needed to try it. A friend got me to sing in front of Troy Taylor, and he took to me right there.

Trey Songz

#85. Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab.

Terry Pratchett

#86. There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another. It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever.

Kristin Kimball

#87. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

Dale Carnegie

#88. He kept messing with her, trying to get her to sleep with him, but Eve had yet to do anything but tease him. In a world full of whores and junkies, not getting laid was a huge turn-on.

Debra Anastasia

#89. I have kept journals at different times in my life. And a lot of my early notebooks became places where I would just think on the page, trying to parse what I was feeling, to find out what I was thinking.

Tracy K. Smith

#90. Some time ago, the Luminatus, or the Great Death, who kept balance between light and darkness, ceased to be. Since then, Forces of Darkness have been trying to rise from below. You are all that stands between them and destruction of the collective soul of humanity. Try not to screw up.

Christopher Moore

#91. At times Valentine wasn't sure whether he kept Matthews about because of his supreme unctuousness or because he had half a suspicion the valet was trying to kill him.

Suzanne Enoch

#92. Gabriel was trying to smile, but the expression kept breaking apart. He was looking at her as if he hadn't seen her for years and years of searching, and had just now walked into a room and come upon her unexpectedly. As if he wanted to look at every part of her, now that he could do it honestly.

L.J.Smith

#93. I'd got a part in the original cast of 'Cats' when I was 16, and that kept me going for a while. After that, I felt lost, both personally and professionally - I was trying to find a way not to be seen only as this bubbly, bright, vivacious person. It felt like I'd lost the freedom to make mistakes.

Bonnie Langford

#94. One should never count the years
one should instead count one's interests. I have kept young trying never to lose my childhood sense of wonderment. I'm glad I still have a vivid curiosity about the world I live in.

Helen Keller

#95. Love was a hundred times worse than all the stupid songs could ever try to explain. And when he loved you back, it was too much. Like all of those feelings could never fit. You'd have to spend your life trying to figure out how, but it wouldn't matter as long as he kept looking at you like that.

K.A. Mitchell

#96. Don't tell me! You're just rubbing it in! It serves me right, though: it was vanity that kept me from coming, egoistic vanity and base despotism, which I haven't been able to get rid of all my life, though all my life I've been trying to break myself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#97. Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group.

John Lennon

#98. She was trying to pull it up to stick it through his throat, but he had her wrist, kept the blade down and his face turned away from its questing edge

Joe Hill

#99. She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.

Terry Pratchett

#100. It seemed to Ellie that you could tell a lot about someone by the way they carried a secret - by how safe they kept it, how soon they told, the way they acted when they were trying to keep it from spilling out.

Jennifer E. Smith