Jim Bishop Quotes

Golf is a game of endless failure and frustration.

Bad things can happen even to the best players.

Sometimes, even the very best course of action fails.

It's a miracle when something actually turns out well because there are so many ways for it to go wrong.

Elmcrest CC, in Cedar Rapids, is where it all started when I was growing up. The tree-lined course has a very demanding layout that requires you to be accurate off the tee and avoid a number of well-placed water hazards on some of the holes.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

It's a crapshoot, publishing.

Whether I fall on my feet or fall on my arse, I dunno. You've got to take those risks.

You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don't. There's just no rhyme or reason.

The game is a game, and things happen, and you can't always execute your plan as perfectly as you'd like to.

With improvisation, I just do it. It might be a total failure but then you just throw the dice again.

Fortune rarely accompanies anyone to the door.

You can predict all you want, but everybody knows what predictions get you.

Success is an absurd, erratic thing. She arrives when one least expects her and after she has come may depart again almost because of a whim.

It's been up, down, and sideways for me, man. I could become a huge star, or I could get cancer tomorrow.

You don't ever know with films. You just hope for the best, but sometimes it's a bit of a crapshoot.

Betting on the success of innovative technologies in the marketplace can carry all the uncertainty and risk that betting on the next card in the deck does at a blackjack table in Las Vegas. There is a factor of randomness that must be factored in, but precisely how to do so is anyone's guess.

Age, they say, is only important if you're cheese. or a wine. They also say, if you are stuck behind one on a golf course, that a tree is 90 per cent air. How come, then, that you invariably send your ball crashing into the remaining 10 per cent?

Technology is like the ante in a poker game. It is the price you pay to play the game. But it doesn't mean you are going to win.

There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.

There are going to be screw-ups, mistakes, confusion, and missteps. One hopes they won’t be fatal.

Much of what we're going to try will not work, and much of what does work will do so for unanticipated reasons.

Human affairs are governed by such a variety of whimsical circumstances, that we should always be prepared to stand the shock of that disappointment which the best concerted measures are constantly subject to.

Luck is not scalable. Luck is not a national strategy.

I've always had a love of cards, ever since I was a little kid. I think poker, as a system, describes the chaos of the world. Our sudden reversals, our freak streaks of fortune. The belief that the next hand can save you, and the inevitable failure of the next hand to save you. I think that describes my world view pretty well.