E. W. Howe Quotes

I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that - the ghosts you chase you never catch.

It was taunted as reality. It was dangled as a carrot. In terms of people's hopes and dreams, to say that that is less of a reality than the daily grind they find themselves in is maybe not correct.

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves.

If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.

I've always had this in some ways pessimistic and in some ways realistic idea that I'm the lowest rung on the ladder.

You see people in Hollywood trying to make blockbuster after blockbuster, but it's not possible. There's some god up there saying, 'You will fail now.' But I suppose that's true of us all.

Dreaming men are haunted men.

The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

If an ass goes travelling he will not come home a horse.

Some men are all right in their place if they only knew the right places.

I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno's arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.

Still bent to make some port he knows not where, still standing for some false impossible shore.

I am disappointed when I don't win, because I want to believe I can win on every horse I ride, which is a ridiculous thing to think. Even if I'm on a horse that I have woken up thinking has no chance, by the time I've reached the course, I'll have convinced myself that it can win and will be disappointed if it doesn't.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is.

Many men think they're playboys, but they invariably land wide of the mark. Surrounding yourself with champagne, fast friends, and paid escorts is the very definition of the word 'loser.'

My dream was to become a ballet dancer, but after a year in bed with rheumatic fever at 13, I had grown too tall, and had no muscle tone left. I tried a ballet class and couldn't even do a plie without falling over. It was my first death.

Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

It was total naivety that got me to Hollywood. I thought it was going to happen straight away. I told myself 'give it 5 years, there's no way I'll be here after that if it doesn't happen'. Cut to ten years later!

The suicide arrives at the conclusion that what he is seeking does not exist; the seeker concludes that what he has not yet looked in the right place.

From my own kind I only learn How foolish comfort is

I'm as much a victim of the romantic myth of 'getting away' as anyone else. My head tells me it's myth, but I don't want to believe it is.