Mary Augusta Ward Quotes

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

I think that instinct, that storytelling instinct, rescued me most of my life.

You have to follow your instinct all the time. Otherwise you don't make it.

I don't go through a torturous intellectual process to decide what to direct. I know what I want to direct the second I read something or hear a story. I just know when it grabs me in a certain way I want to direct it. And then I spend the next four to six months trying to talk myself out of it, because directing is really hard! But it's true, I know essentially when and what I want to do next... it's an undeniable feeling I get and it's not the same feeling I get when I wind up producing something.

Listening to the inner voice - trusting the inner voice - is one of the most important lessons of leadership.

There's a little thing on your shoulder called intuition and it whispers in your ear. Everyone has that, there is a voice telling you to do something. Most people ignore it - but you must listen to it. I do it every day, all day.

Follow your gut and your heart. You'll almost always make the right choice.

Do what you feel is right, baby.

Your heart will always tell you what’s working and what’s not.

This is the essential element that cannot be measured by any analysis or device, and I believe it's at the heart of success in all things: the power of intuition and the ability to harness and use it like a master.

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.

When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity...I can be sure that I am right.

I remember being really young and having this voice inside that told me to trust my gut. And my gut has been really, really strong in my life. It's pretty vocal and it leads me.

Most decisions are seat-of-the-pants judgments. You can create a rationale for anything. In the end, most decisions are based on intuition and faith.

I've totally learned in this process that 99% of the time, your gut is right, and you know what's right for you. I know exactly what's right for my career and for my art, and sometimes, even if the whole room is saying, 'Don't do that, don't do that,' you know that doing that is going to be good for you, in the long run.

Learn to let your intuition-gut instinct-tell you when the food, the relationship, the job isn't good for you (and conversely, when what you're doing is just right).

I think following my instinct has proven to lead me in the right direction, and it's hard to hear sometimes, because it's a noisy world and there's a lot of people talking to you.

If something feels right, I do it. If it feels wrong, I don't. It's really very, very simple, but you've got to be willing to take your chances doing stuff that may look crazy to other people - or not doing something that looks right to others but just feels wrong to you.

You have to go with your instincts.

For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.

Every major move in my life was done instinctively.

...his wartime experience had taught him to trust his instincts, even though he'd never been sure where they'd come from.

My instinct about painting says, 'if you don't think about it, it's right.' As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets.

If your heart, head and gut are telling you the same thing, then you owe it to yourself to chase it.

The truth is I have from the very beginning listened to my instincts. All of my best decisions in life have come because I was attuned to what really felt like the next right move for me.