Frustrating Quotes & Sayings

To me, emails are a little bit frustrating. I think that the telephone is much preferred because you get the sound of the voice and the interest and everything else you can't see in an email. — T. Boone Pickens

We always need to remember that behind almost every great moment in history, there are heroic people doing really boring and frustrating things for a prolonged period of time. — Gail Collins

It's a huge, huge pressure that so many people depend on you. The type of player I am and people look at me to come out and perform a certain way. Not being able to play on the biggest stage of the season, it's frustrating. One thing I wanted to do was not be frustrated about it and figure out what I can do to change and better myself on the court. — Jermaine O'Neal

That's the other thing about working on movies, the commitment is years. That's one thing that's so frustrating about the process is that it goes on and on and on for years. — Thomas Lennon

The studio part, to me, can be pretty laborious. You're inside for hours on end and can be pretty frustrating to get the sound you hear in your head to come out of those speakers. — Mike Love

Politics is a kind of problem solving. No matter what organizational challenge you face, and how frustrating it might be, it's just another kind of problem to solve. — Scott Berkun

It's very hard - weirdly hard - to clear your mind of all that crap so that you can just sit down and write and find that place where you're just involved and enjoying the imaginary place you've discovered. All the other "problems" with writing are just puzzles, and they can be interesting to try to crack, even when it's frustrating. — Dan Chaon

I'm a big crier. I never cry when something is painful, but I cry if things are frustrating. Like if I'm trying to do something, and I mess up over and over. If I'm playing a video game, and I can't beat a level that I've tried 10 times, I'll cry. When I was a kid, I think I cried for every practice from 2003 to the middle of 2006. — Ronda Rousey

There's something very beautiful and compelling about someone who has ambition and someone who knows what they want, but it can get a little frustrating at times, so I understand that. I have sympathy for that. — Michael Ealy

Although a firm swat could bring a recalcitrant child swiftly into line, the changes were usually external, lasting only as long as the swatter remained in view ... Permanent transformation had to be internal ... The habits of self discipline, as laborious and frustrating as they were to achieve, offered the only real possibility of keeping children safe from their own excesses as well as the omnipresent dangers of society. — Mary Blakely

I love being a musician. I love the lifestyle. But I think it's probably as difficult and frustrating as anything. — Trevor Dunn

The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time. — Ed Bliss

I believe motherhood will be the seminal event in your life. You will find it in turns gratifying, frustrating, amazing, and overwhelming. It will be the most marvelous, challenging, vital role you'll ever play. " 'Someone once told me, "As mothers, our job is not to raise children, but to raise adults. — Lori Nelson Spielman

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home. — David Foster Wallace

Also, differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating. — Jim Coleman

Get a sense of humor. If you don't, it'll be incredibly frustrating. — Jon Stewart

So many people imagine housekeeping to be boring, frustrating, repetitive, unintelligent drudgery. I cannot agree. In fact, having kept house, practiced law, taught, and done many other sorts of work, low and high-paid, I can assure you that it is actually lawyers who are most familiar with the experience of unintelligent drudgery. — Cheryl Mendelson

The dead can be even more frustrating to deal with than are many of the living, which is astonishing when you consider it's the living who run the Department of Motor Vehicles. — Dean Koontz

annoyed her, she also knew her psychiatrist's sentiment was right. She sighed. It was beyond frustrating when things you didn't like were also your reality. "Where do you want the living room furniture?" one of the movers asked. She directed him inside and showed him the dining area off the kitchen that would serve as living and dining. If it weren't for Corrine's forcing her to a table most evenings, Shaye would have eaten every meal curled up on the couch in front of a television, and now — Jana Deleon

It's frustrating actually, the time involved in getting something released these days. My new CD has actually been finished for a year. It's only now that it's being released. — Mick Taylor

He wa so difficult to read, it was frustrating. His thoughts and emotions always seemed to be kept very carefully under wraps. Whereas I felt like I was an open book. — Tiffany Snow

I'm a bit too much of a people pleaser and that can be frustrating for people in your life. — Jason Ritter

Directing is a nice job. It's the best job for me. If i had to pay money to do it, I would do itIt's problematical. It's disapointing often. It's very challenging. It's frustrating as hell. It's extremely demanding and totally satisfying work. And if I wasn't doing this, I would have to do legitimate work for a living. There are guys out there really working for a living, cleaning streets or coal mining, teaching. Directing is playing. Acting. — William Friedkin

You make a film and you can't really pick the way it's put to the public. You control the content, but the way it's marketed, or the poster, or what they're telling the public about the film, it's beyond you. Some people don't even see them, because they think they already know it. That can be frustrating, when something you've done is marketed in a way you think is antithetical to what it is. — Richard Linklater

It's very frustrating making a picture in Paris. We work hard all day at the studio to get a love scene just right. Then, on my way home, I see couples on every street corner doing it better. — Bob Hope

The resolution of the Phoenix Saga was one of the most frustrating experiences that I think any of us ever had, but I also think it was the right move. The decision, three years later, to undo the Phoenix Saga with the resurrection of Jean was less so, but that's in my opinion. — Chris Claremont

It's frustrating that people attribute something to certain songs and that's not what they're about at all. — Matt Tong

What people refer to as nerds or geeks, all they really are is people who are passionate about what they like, and aren't afraid of it. To me, it's very frustrating when people are discourage from being enthusiastic about things. This idea of the geek, or the nerd; all that person really is - and I would consider myself one - is someone who is not ashamed of liking what they enjoy. — Andrew W.K.

Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought. — Mark Kingwell

It's a beautiful thing to be that committed to something that you get so much joy from, but it is like a sick addiction, because sometimes it's incredibly volatile, incredibly painful, and very frustrating. A man shouldn't be defined by his work, but I am. — Scott Weiland

Fucking family. Feeble and forlorn and floundering and foolish and frustrating and functional and sad, sad. Fucking family. Fiend or foe. — Rick Moody

I do not worry very much about the young men and women, including many returned missionaries, who are of such an age that in all likelihood they will be married within a relatively short time. I feel they should not be put under pressure by counsel from Church leaders to rush into it. But neither do I believe that they should dally along in a fruitless, frustrating, and frivolous dating game that only raises hopes and brings disappointment and in some cases heartache.

The young men should take the initiative in this matter. It goes without saying that they should be encouraged to live worthy of the companionship of a wonderful partner. They should be taught to put aside any thought of selfish superiority and recognize and follow the teaching of the Church that the husband and wife walk side by side with neither one ahead or behind. — Gordon B. Hinckley

It's frustrating when our best efforts to help people fail. But if we could see life through their weary eyes and experience their trials with the same frayed emotions, we might understand why. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But and so things are slow, and like you they have this irritating suspicion that any real satisfaction is still way, way off, and it's frustrating; but like basically decent kids they suck it up, bite the foil, because what's going on is just plain real; and no matter what we want, the real world is pretty slow, at present, for kids our age. It probably gets less slow as you get older and more of the world is behind you, and less ahead, but very few people of our generation are going to find this exchange attractive, I'll bet. — David Foster Wallace

Mark Waugh, the most fluent and aesthetically pleasing batsman of his generation but also one of the most frustrating to watch. Often, when he appeared to be a class above the rest and to have the bowling at his mercy, he would play a lazy shot to what appeared, more often than not, an innocuous delivery. And just like that his innings would be over. To make matters worse, he didn't seem to care; he would nonchalantly wander off the field. No shaking of the head or staring back at the pitch to apportion blame. His fans had to learn to accept 30s and 40s instead of centuries and 150s. His concentration, some would say his interest, never seemed to be there in the Test arena. Despite playing some match-winning Test innings, Waugh was never quite able to shake the 'lackadaisical' tag. — Sean Ehlers

I find it extremely frustrating that those who strive for prestige get a free pass on the bad behavior it often takes to get there. — Charles F. Glassman

It was frustrating to still be in the dark about something and be given only so little light. — Lauren Lola

We do not like the truth because it is simple, we do not want the truth because it is hard, and we do not trust the truth because it is free.
Perhaps because many are idealists and publishing is so frustrating, writers are particularly vulnerable to believing in those who offer hope in exchange for cash. Writers know life is tough and we all want to think of an easier way. Maybe for a rare few, there is. If you count on that, you are a chump and somebody is going to take your money and break your heart. — Pat Walsh

I'm not saying it isn't frustrating that my films haven't gotten a bigger release, but I'm really happy with them and if you just keep cranking and eventually, if you have a certain sensibility, some of your movies will hit and some just won't. — Alex Winter

I didn't read at all until I was 12. I just couldn't. It was too frustrating. — Ahmet Zappa

One of the most frustrating parts about songwriting for me is production, but it makes me want to get better at it and ends up being one of the most rewarding parts of it. — Brendon Urie

The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom and openmindedness. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives. — Ronald Reagan

For most governors, we find the United States Senate or the United States Congress very frustrating at the slow pace in which they act. There doesn't seem to be a lot of discipline and organization to what they do. — Dave Heineman

One forceful CEO recently lamented to me about the absence of "real leaders" in his organization. He felt his company was full of compliant people, not committed visionaries. This was especially frustrating to a man who regards himself as a skilled communicator and risk taker. In fact, he is so brilliant at articulating his vision that he intimidates everyone around him. Consequently, his views rarely get challenged publicly. People have learned not to express their own views and visions around him. While he would not see his own forcefulness as a defensive strategy, if he looked carefully, he would see that it functions in exactly that way. — Peter M. Senge

It is frustrating to be a Black woman in the entertainment industry. — Dionne Warwick

I can only assume that there's only one thing more frustrating than not being able to find someone, and that's not being found. I would want someone to find me, more than anything. — Cecelia Ahern

Words are a pretty blunt instrument. There's always going to be slippage between the words and the infinite complexities of a thought. As a writer, I find that frustrating, but as a social animal, I wouldn't have it any other way. — Kate Grenville

God helps me for sure every day and at every contest. I broke my hand and had to get surgery on it. The recovery was really frustrating because I had to skip three weeks at the beginning of the season. But I flipped it around and took it as a blessing. I said a lot of prayers and just asked God to do His thing. I did other things to compliment the recovery like getting the right sleep and taking care of my body. But I went back to the doctor after four weeks and he was ecstatic about the recovery of my hand. I take that as a tribute to my faith and my belief in doing the right things. — Nick Goepper

I searched his face and smiled as a soft grin formed along his
lips as he said, I truly don't deserve you, but I'm grateful every single day
that you're mine. I know it's frustrating at times, and I appreciate that even
through all the bullshit you still stick around. I didn't realize how much my
bottled-up problems bothered you. I promise to work harder at it. Just know
that I am trying. — E.L. Montes

I've won a championship on every level except the NBA. It's frustrating to have not gotten that in the first two years. — Steve Blake

I just go out there and try to help my teammates any way I can. They are on me a lot to be in the lineup and do stuff for the team, but sometimes it's just ... frustrating. — Andruw Jones

There's a part of me that feels like it gets really frustrating to keep working in the manner that I made the book 'Shortcomings,' where everything is pretty accurate to the real world. — Adrian Tomine

I believe almost every author have gone through the terribly uncomfortable period between the time of shedding the seeds of a story and waiting to see it flourish as a published book, spending hours watering and fertilizing it. This is a dreadful period, frustrating and depressing. — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

Being with Marcus DeLuca was draining, frustrating, confusing, and extraordinary all at the same time. Mia (Disastrous) — E.L. Montes

I'm trying to find answers. It can be quite frustrating, but at the same time, I'm never quite satisfied with what I'm doing, so I'm always looking for the next thing. — Robert Longo

Art is challenging and frustrating but I don't linger in it. I work on five paintings at a time so if I'm frustrated I put one down and begin another. — Robert Bateman

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software. — Arthur C. Clarke

The single most frustrating and saddening aspect of human life is its shocking brevity. — Sean DeLauder

Writing is a mixed blessing. We, who are addicted, berate ourselves and feel guilty when we don't write and at the same time put it off and hunt for diversions. Why? Because the this that makes us the happiest is also tedious, hard and frustrating. Writing makes us crazy; not writing even crazier. — Marcia Preston

The only thing you really get to figure out after a lifetime of study is that there's more stuff to figure out. Frustrating and enlightening at the same time. — Jasper Fforde

What I have now are good problems of trying to decide and what I really want to do is good work next. My phone's ringing a lot more and I've got nine lines so when it doesn't ring, it's very frustrating. — Bob Saget

If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. — Thomas Sowell

But there was no way to stop change. The same thing that made life so very wonderful was the same thing that made it so fucking frustrating. — S.E. Harmon

The growing pains of ... being an actor, that was a little frustrating at times because you feel like you have great capacity to do many things. And yet there seems to be a misunderstanding about who you are and what you're trying to do. And that requires patience, and people eventually will understand. — Matt Dillon

Being a hero to someone, even if it is a dog, is a feeling like no other. Though it can be frustrating, it can be the most rewarding thing to give someone a second chance at a happy life. — Elizabeth Parker

What do prisoners do? Write, of course; even if they have to use blood as ink, as the Marquis de Sade did. The reasons they write, the exquisitely frustrating restrictions of their autonomy and the fact that no one listens to their cries, are all the reasons that mentally ill people, and even many normal people write. We write to escape our prisons. — Alice Weaver Flaherty

I think when average-size people start taking roles that were meant for dwarfs, that's a little frustrating because there aren't that many roles out there for height-challenged actors. — Verne Troyer

There's a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I've got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it ... so I don't write a million songs. — Christine McVie

The American political system is so porous, it's so open, it's so frustrating for those who are trying to make policy. — Michael Mandelbaum

I'm in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, reasons something solid to cling to, something real, but just when I think I've got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, turns out I'm still shattered, scattered, and battered. But you probably already knew that, didn't you? ... You might not be able to help me. That makes me sad, but not for me. It makes me sad for you. It must be frustrating for a shrink to have a patient who's beyond fixing. That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that's bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they'll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person. (129) — Chevy Stevens

He was in love with a man who was flighty and spontaneous and headstrong all wrapped into one gorgeous, fun, frustrating package. Ty was a walking emotional hazard, and Zane had known that from the start. — Abigail Roux

It is a very frustrating thing to be the face of a creative project and yet essentially have zero creative control over that project. Essentially, you're a pawn in the system. — Evangeline Lilly

Don't make stuff because you want to make money - it will never make you enough money. And don't make stuff because you want to get famous - because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people - and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.
Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won't - and if they don't notice, I know it's frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn't change anything - because your responsibility is not to the people you're making the gift for, but to the gift itself. — John Green

Most of the stuff I've written has never even gotten made. It's par for the course. It's a great living, but it also gets very frustrating. — Scott Aukerman

If our lives were smooth sailing without painful hardships, unexpected disappointments or frustrating challenges, we wouldn't have our own personal testimony as credible evidence revealing God's omnipotent power. — Dana Arcuri

When I used to play golf. It's a terrible miserable game. It's incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water ... You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to. — Alan Lightman

One thing about this game: It's really frustrating. In hockey, if you team's losing, you can start a fight. You can get your frustrations out. — Eric Gagne

The most frustrating thing is picking up a script and loving the roles in it except the female ones ... It's really annoying and something I've striven to change in the industry. — Margot Robbie

What's frustrating more than anything is when chefs start to cut corners and believe that they are incognito in the way they send out appetizers, entrees, and they know it's not 100 percent, but they think the customers can't spot it. — Gordon Ramsay

I'm hanging in there, trying to spend as much quality time with my wife and kids as possible, and though it's very frustrating to know I won't beat the cancer, there's a great satisfaction in knowing that I'm walking off the field with no regrets. — Randy Pausch

Writing does produce a very unique satisfaction. There are times when I'm writing that it's frustrating or appalling or difficult, but when it goes well, it goes really well, and there is a feeling of rightness, like I'm doing the thing I was meant to do, almost in a mystical way, like I'm at an appropriate angle to the world. — Rachel Kushner

Writing a complete novel is time consuming, frustrating, nerve wrecking, and most of the time your work is under valued, under appreciated, and taken for granted. So why do authors do it? Because not writing at all, feels far worse. — Carl Henegan

People always find it so frustrating that there's no structure they can see, that they just have to follow the river downstream and see what they find. They want to know the plot so they can guess the end, because they're afraid of what it might be. I can understand that, even though I know it's not the way things work. I never know what the hell's going to happen next, but I can live with that. — Michael Marshall Smith

It's frustrating when you want to play but can't. I didn't touch a racket for three weeks and when I started playing again last week, I still felt some pain in my wrist. — Marat Safin

While I played Ranji Trophy for five years, I used to be asked, 'When are you playing for the nation?' - a question which I didn't have any answer to. I kept playing before I got my first break in 1996; those five years were indeed frustrating. — Rahul Dravid

Sometimes he found it frustrating to be a sadist in an age when self-mutilation was all the rage — Dean Koontz

I always tell people that the music industry may be frustrating sometimes, but the singing never gets old. It's something I grew up doing, and I take the bitter with the sweet. — Monica

In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers. — David Brin

I'm not talking about loving someone in expectation of anything in return. I'm talking about loving someone because of who they are. Because of the way they talk, they smile, they fight; because of what they say and what they believe; because of all the wonderful, annoying, beautiful, frustrating, stupid, lovely, embarrassing things they do and they are. Because they are the one person in all the world who makes you finally understand how perfectly, intricately amazing a human being can be. And if they do not love me it changes nothing, because I will not love them so they love me, I will love them because I have no other choice. — George DeValier

The elements of trial and error, similar to earth and sky, and fire and water, delineates the constituent modules of our lives. Living robustly includes more failures than successes. We achieve adeptness to living by exhibiting a willingness to make good faith mistakes and learn from each misadventure. Every effort that fails to achieve our expected result is understandably frustrating. The fact is that without ideas and dreams and devoid of occasional crash landings, a person can never hope to achieve any worthy acts to temper resounding personal disappointment. Meaningful success is ultimately defined when a person dies, when an entire life's work devoted to performing passionate and compassionate enterprises can be judge as a whole unit. — Kilroy J. Oldster

And there was something both frustrating and maddeningly arousing about that. His restraint made something burn low and deep in her belly, and then his mouth, oh God his mouth. He tasted like cinnamon, again, and every now and then he'd pull away, just a little - just enough to make her want to drag him back. Before giving her a teasing lick with that perfect, curling tongue of his. It set all the nerve endings in her upper lip on fire. — Charlotte Stein

We'd like to have immediate answers to all of our questions. I think medicine in particular. I found it frustrating as a physician sometimes to not be able to tell someone exactly why something was happening to them. There are still so many mysteries in medicine. — Laurel Clark

It's so frustrating that everybody rags on eighties music, when there's a lot of terrific stuff out there," he said. "There's no irony to it. It's not afraid to just be happy or enthusiastic or earnest. Or to have melody. Sure, you can blame it for being naive, but isn't that refreshing next to the whiny navel-gazing that came after it? — Amanda DeWees

We don't realize that we face a frustrating situation in which we win every battle, but we lose the war. — Ami Ayalon

She's like a Rubik's Cube. So frustrating at times that you want to toss it out the goddamn window. But you don't. You can't. You're compelled to keep playing with it until you figure it out. — Emma Chase

Losing something mediocre can feel frustrating or annoying, but losing something beautiful comes with a desperate form of sadness. — Ty Tashiro

By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel. — Haruki Murakami

But for a man, it's different. Like, separation can take years - it can take years to make divorce final. What am I supposed to do during those years? I think that's, you know it's not the *craziest* thing, but it's where a lot of rumors come from. It's frustrating. — Khloe Kardashian

I know, I know: it can be frustrating as hell. But people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You dumb down brain surgery enough for a preschooler to think he understands it, the little tyke's liable to grab a microwave scalpel and start cutting when no one's looking. — Peter Watts

The most frustrating things is when you read something that has so much potential, but there are other little red flags where you think, I don't know that I would see eye-to-eye with the people making this film. And that is the worst environment to enter, and absolutely not worth the risk. — Anna Kendrick