Creative Setbacks Quotes

My first film was a failure. I had many failures too. It's not easy dealing with it.

My first novel took almost six years to sell and was rejected 37 times in the interim, and then finally sold for the smallest amount of money my literary agent had ever negotiated for a work of fiction.

I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

After 'Rent,' I tried to make a record, and it didn't work out, and it was the Broadway community that welcomed me back. It's where I feel the most understood, most at home.

At this point, I've really failed at a lot of things. It's nice to be able to say that, in a way. I've failed at music. I've failed at dance. And acting - there have been times when I went out and read lines to audition for acting parts. I believe that if anybody wrangled together those audition tapes, it would be pretty hysterically funny.

There are times when your films don't work, your phone doesn't ring and you wonder what you have done.

When 'Firefly' was canceled, we had just a few other places to shop it to - to take it over... And all of them had reasons why they couldn't do it that time.

I'm in a foul mood as I'm making stupid mistakes... This morning I lost beyond repair a painting with which I had been happy, having done about twenty sessions on it; it had to be thoroughly scraped away... what a rage I was in!

After you've done the first feature, then you have heck of a difficult time getting your second film off the ground. They look at your first film and they say, "Oh well, we don't want you anymore."

I've been trying to write a book since before I was old enough to vote, and I've collected many rejection slips from publishers and magazines. I used to keep them all stuck to my refrigerator, with magnets, but an ex-girlfriend told me they were depressing, and defeatist, and suggested I take them down. A very wise suggestion on her part.

After 'Grahan,' you'd be nuts to think I'd try producing again!

Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.

Publishing can be tough. It has the ability to kill dreams.

There's tons of creative people in television that have one failure after another, and they just step up higher. I could never get over that. When I had a failure, there was no such thing as just getting over it.

I was discouraged at drama school, along with most of my peers.

I didn't get anything published until I was thirty-three, and yet I'd written five novels and six or seven plays. The plays, I should point out, were dreadful.

I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary. It was Mick Jagger's idea.The other one was Simple Plan, based on a novel by Scott Smith. It's a great book - really stark, not a comedy - about a guy who finds $4 million in a plane crash and decides to keep it.

I have SO many books I didn't sell. Some my agent rejected outright, others made it all the way to my editor to be turned away. Not everything is a winner, which is tough when you've devoted eight or nine months of your life to something.

I've written several pilots that haven't gone, so that's why you haven't seen any.

It is a little bit demoralizing to work a show, and you just try so many times to get something, and the creator just keeps saying, 'No, not that.' Then they just instantly come up with something.