Think nothing done while aught remains to do.
Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.
On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died.
My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.
Sometimes hard work doesn't pay off.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
I go to Milwaukee, I get cut, that really put a funk in me. I'm like, 'Man, it's over for me. I can't even make it in training camp now?'
Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced - because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
I can imagine they're asking for someone, and someone is asking for me. Everyone knows I keep asking for Wonderboy, and I will - I'll keep knocking on the door.
I was a million percent in love with Edward Scissorhands. I remember looking in the mirror on the last day of shooting... and thinking how sad I was to be saying goodbye to Edward.
I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
The wealthiest place on the planet is the graveyard, because in the graveyard we will find inventions that we were never ever exposed to, ideas, dreams that never became a reality, hopes and aspirations that were never acted upon.
Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
My mother started out by being a very good girl. She did everything that was expected of her, and it cost her dearly. Late in her life, she was furious that she had not followed her own heart; she thought that it had ruined her life, and I think she was right.
I'd love to have done more film, but you can't have everything.
She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.
I turned 30 as a janitor. I was thinking at the time that Hank Williams died when he was 29. All my peers were at least 10 years younger than I was. I felt like an old has-been at the time.
My father wasn't too crazy about me. I loved him anyway. One of the things I regretted for a long time was that he died before he could see that he would be proud of me. I was actually more what he wished for than he thought.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Discontent arises from a knowledge of the possible, as contrasted with the actual
The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.
We've all got a black book of missed opportunities.
