Kelly Slater Quotes

I wasn't entitled to dream so big. The idea of me being a writer wasn't even possible in my mind. Even when I began to write and first published, I couldn't call myself a writer.

With Masvidal, I dropped him and it's the first time I'd ever dropped anyone in my life. I kind of started to turn the corner after that, and it was just a realization that if my hands were a weakness, it was only because I didn't believe in them. I had the talent to do it.

When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won't do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years - the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.

Know that nothing can hinder you but yourself. If you believe you can, you can.

I always think I'm lazy, maybe I could do better, I could make more effort and I always have the feeling that there is a glass wall that I cannot get through. But maybe when I get through, then it's over.

I don't know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there's just the long, messy climb out of the pit you've dug youself.

The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.

The word 'when' is so important for a people, for an individual! If an individual thinks he won't do it, he'll never do it. Even if he's highly intelligent, even if he has countless talents.

I seem to think that anything worth having in life has to be painful to attain.

I think sometimes the hardest obstacle is yourself. I can certainly be my own worst critic and oftentimes forget to enjoy the here and now. Physically, the hardest obstacle I have overcome was severe back issues. [This] resulted in finally getting surgery to replace four discs, which changed my life back to active - which is how I am happiest.

I was working through a lot of challenges at every angle of my life, and a lot of self-doubt, a lot of pity-partying. And I think every woman in her twenties has been there - where it feels like no matter what you are doing to fight through the thing that is holding you back, nothing can fill that void.

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion... Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it... So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.

When we face our problems, they disappear. So learn from failure and let success be the silent incentive.

You have to dream, you have to have a vision, and you have to set a goal for yourself that might even scare you a little because sometimes that seems far beyond your reach. Then I think you have to develop a kind of resistance to rejection, and to the disappointments that are sure to come your way.

Selecting a challenge and meeting it creates a sense of self-empowerment that becomes the ground for further successful challenges.

The days are stacked against what we think we are.

I think we are all overcoming tiny obstacles every second of every day even if that means just a small shift in perspective.

The terrifying thing in my life is that I am just an actress. And I have to keep pushing it and getting approval, approval, approval or I don’t think I’m worth two cents. And I am starting to get over it, thank God. And I’m just sad because I don’t have many years left and I wish I had a longer space of time to think that Elaine Stritch is okay.

What really fueled me, and maybe infuriated me, is that nobody believed in me. Nobody. I don't even think I believe in myself. Part of what I was trying to do was to make the decision to go into business and find the guts to see it through. I was told that when I went in to see the bankers that I was supposed to be very muted, that I was supposed to blend in, that I was supposed to have the typical drab suit on.

Cosmopolis is the movie of my life. I didn't consider myself an actor before, even if I had 10 years of acting behind me. I always felt like a fraud, and inappropriate. I doubt a lot. David Cronenberg gave me confidence in myself. He changed my way of acting and thinking in this industry.

I think there are times when you're jamming with the universe, and other times when it feels like no matter how hard I work, no matter how good a person I am, I will always be punished for being mediocre.

I grew up thinking that because I couldn't read, I was stupid and would never amount to anything. I worked my way through college as a waitress and thought I wasn't capable of doing anything else. My grades in English were horrible, and I barely got through.

I had no idea what I was walking into, and the years and years of hard work it would take. I felt like an outsider and like it was never going to happen. But even if I would have known, I think I still would have done it. Dancers are perfectionists, and that's what keeps us going and growing.

Doubt is probably the biggest obstacle to overcome. Once you rise above doubt, you are on your way to success.