Time To Get It Done Quotes & Sayings

Words streamed from my mouth, some familiar, some not.
The last of the were, "I love you."
He rose up off me with a grin. "If I'd known it was that easy to get you to admit how you feel, I would have done this a long time ago. — Cora Carmack

Yes, Ally?" What have I done? I try to figure out what I should say. Maybe ask to go get a drink? But the thing is that something deep inside me really does want to answer. Because I'm an expert on these two words. I know what they mean. And how they feel. Especially after that butterfly party. Mr. Daniels's eyes are wide, and they are waiting for me. "Ally?" he says. "It's okay, now. Take your time." And it's like he can see right into my guts. Knows how sad I am. Like he's handing me a flashlight in a dark room. I — Lynda Mullaly Hunt

I'm going to kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I'll be dead. you know, in fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect. Or wait a minute. It
with the time change, I could be alive for six hours in New York but dead three hours in Paris. I could get things done, and I could also be dead. — Woody Allen

That's one of the things Yardem used to tell me that actually made sense. He said that you don't go through grief like it was a chore to be done. You can't push and get finished quicker. The best you can do is change the way you always do, and the time comes when you aren't the same person who was in pain. — Daniel Abraham

'm so fortunate to have done what I love to do for so long, but the day I retired was one of the best days of my life. Not because I was happy to get away from the sport, but because it was clear in my mind that I had done all I possibly could, and that it was time to go. — Carl Lewis

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is "I didn't get enough sleep." The next one is "I don't have enough time." Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of ... Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn't get, or didn't get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack ... This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life. — Brene Brown

Sometimes you wonder, "How did I get myself into that scene? Why did I take that on?" You know, you couldn't really have done anything different at that time. Now maybe, if that comes around again, you might think twice, not think about it at all, or not do anything at all about it. But let it play itself out as it now presents itself. That's called being open to life's changes, however subtle or outrageous they come. — Art Hochberg

We call it infectious impatience. That's his hallmark and we are trying to inculcate it in the entire organization. Infectious impatience. So that things not only get done but get done in double quick time. — Mukesh Ambani

Make excellent mistakes.
Too many people spend their time avoiding mistakes. They're so concerned about being wrong, about messing up, that they never try anything
which means they never do anything. Their focus is avoiding failure. But that's actually a crummy way to achieve success. The most successful people spectacular mistakes
huge, honking screwups! why? They're trying to do something big, but each time they make a mistake, they get a little better and move a little closer to excellence.
Making mistakes seems risky. It is/ But it's more risky not to.
I'm not talking about random, stupid, thoughtless blunders, though. I'm talking about good mistakes.
Mistakes come from having high aspirations, from trying to do something nobody else has done. — Daniel H. Pink

Being home schooled is awesome because you can make your own schedule, so as far as time management, it's up to you how much you get done and when you get it done. It's all got to get done; how you do it is up to you. — Jason Dolley

It wasn't only the Lorites who said that is not a new result. People re-invented the wheel all the time. There was nothing shameful in it. If the rest of us oohed and aahed and said, "Gosh, a wheel, no one's ever thought of that before," just to make that person feel good, nothing would ever get done. — Neal Stephenson

It's also true that many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. — Eric Schmidt

Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that's when the damage gets done and if we don't keep that historical memory, we will allow them to do it again next time. — Martin Baker

I knew I used food to cope with emotions, but just knowing it wasn't enough to completely stop it. That's why I created the twenty-second rule: Before letting myself rip into a bag of junk food, I forced myself to sit down and county to twenty. Slowly. During those twenty seconds I made myself answer a very simple question: What was really bothering me? Almost every single time, I came up with the answer before the twenty seconds were up. The next question was: What can I do right this minute to help fix it? Do I need to call someone to sort out a misunderstanding? Do I need to get paperwork done? Do I need to run overdue errands? . . .By the time I came up with something that I could do right at that moment my urge to eat had subsided and I was tacking the underlying problem. — Monica Seles

But acting is my main profession so it's about finding the right balance. I don't know how, if I went any further with the music, I would manage to do both - I would have to take time off from acting because I couldn't do both at same time. I could do six months on and six months off perhaps. But I'm really proud of the record. I've worked on it for a while and I'm really glad to finally get the album out, having done three EPs prior to its release. — Iwan Rheon

A flash of enlightenment offers a preview of coming attractions, but when it fades, you will see more clearly what separates you from that state - your compulsive habits, outmoded beliefs, false associations, and other mental structures. Just when our lives are starting to get better, we may feel like things are getting worse - because for the first time we see clearly what needs to be done. — Dan Millman

Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, you've got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you're doing, it needs to stop while you write. A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), I'll write with earplugs in - even if it's dead silent at home. — Nathan Englander

I find my best writing time is actually 6 A.M., before the detritus of the day - the fish fingers and the school uniform and dogs and bills - have had a chance to clog up my brain. I can usually get 500 words done before 7 A.M. But it is difficult, and the Internet, and social networking, are terrible timesucks. — Jojo Moyes

It's a tough time my friends. We need to make sacrifices to ensure our troops have the tools they need in order to get the job done. This budget will help us win the War on Terror. — Dennis Hastert

Once the habit is ingrained and you become the starter, the center of the circle, you will find more and more things to notice, to instigate, and to initiate. Momentum builds and you get better at generating it. If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you'll wake up with a list. And as you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised. What might be considered a board-level decision at one of your competitors' companies gets done as a matter of course. What might be reserved for a manager's intervention gets handled at the customer level, saving you time and money (and generating customer joy). This incredibly prosaic idea, the very simple act of initiating, is actually profoundly transformative. Forward motion is a defensible business asset. — Seth Godin

By concentrating single-mindedly on your most important task, you can reduce the time required to complete it by 50 percent or more. It has been estimated that the tendency to start and stop a task - to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it - can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500 percent. Each time you return to the task, you have to familiarize yourself with where you were when you stopped and what you still have to do. You have to overcome inertia and get yourself going again. You have to develop momentum and get into a productive work rhythm. But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. You get better and better and more productive. You work faster and more effectively. — Brian Tracy

I have to admit that business-type thoughts do sneak into my head: I hope our customers pay us, I hope this stuff is decent, I hope we get it done on time. The little additions and subtractions that one has to do. Take sales, take costs and try to get that big positive number at the bottom. — Bill Gates

It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones.
It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break
these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward? — Laurie Halse Anderson

I've done four videos for older people under my new brand, Prime Time, and the missing link was yoga. I'm aiming it for older people - people who have never worked out or who are recovering from a surgery and have to start slow. It's easy, you can't get hurt, it's very doable, and I've done it in ten-minute segments. — Jane Fonda

I think if they wanted to get me to leave 'Children in Need,' they'd have to drag me off screaming. It's one thing that's so close to my heart, and I feel passionately about it. I gave up my radio show, with regret, but knowing I'd done it for a long time, the same with Eurovision. But 'Children in Need' is different. — Terry Wogan

And then the last album, 'Get It', was done over a shorter period of time and I started using other musicians, as opposed to playing all the instruments myself like I did on the other two. — Dave Edmunds

What was wrong with the past?" asked Mama Ramotswe. She intended the question seriously. There were too many people who took the view that the past was bad, that we should rid ourselves of all traces of it as soon as possible. But the past was not bad; some of it may have been less than perfect-- there had been cruelties then that we had done well to get rid of-- but there had also been plenty of good things. There had been the old Botswana ways, the courtesy and the kindness; there had been the attitude that you should find time for other people and not always be in a desperate rush; there had been the belief that you should listen to other people, should talk to them, rather than spend all your time fiddling with your electronic gadgets; there had been the view that it was a good thing to sit under a tree sometimes and look up at the sky and think about cattle or pumpkins or non-electric things like that. — Alexander McCall Smith

Take a walk through the garden of forgiveness and pick a flower of forgiveness for everything you have ever done. When you get to that time that is now, make a full and total forgiveness of your entire life and smile at the bouquet in your hands because it truly is beautiful. — Stephen Richards

Don't talk about legacy. I have a job to do, and I'm doing it. And I'm not expecting a legacy and I'm not expecting to get pride from some legacy, I'm doing a job that I believe needs to be done. I am willing to do it for the time, and I am not looking for some kind of an accolade or whatever. I don't consider myself anything special. I work hard. — Frank Lowy

Often, I find it really hard to see what I'm doing when I'm in the thick of things. I can get too precious and have to force myself to put my paintings aside. There's a wall in my studio where I hang paintings that I think are done or nearly done. Over time, I'll realise which ones are working and which aren't. — Cecily Brown

The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white. — Terry Pratchett

Who's that man you were talking to?"

"Oh, that's Norwood. He was checking you in for your first shift. I'll introduce you tomorrow."

She made a face. "No rush."

"I mean, you were scheduled to have a brief orientation with him today, but you know, you needed your beauty sleep, so we don't have time. Are you aware, Lex, that sloth is a deadly sin?"

She made a face at him, then glanced back at the hallway. She thought she could make out a bustle of activity behind the array of frosted glass tiles that lined its right-hand wall, but Uncle Mort ushered her out the front door too quickly for her to get a closer look.

"Wait, we're done here?"

"Well, I was going to show you around upstairs as well, but - "

"No time. Sloth. I get it."

"Deadly sin. — Gina Damico

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. — Samuel Beckett

I guess that,when it's done and you're done and everything has happened,that's when it's time to get up and start making things happen for yourself. — Kelsey Macke

We rarely get the chance to see things anew. I remember a Latin translation that caused me to fail an exam at school because one of the words, translated for us at the bottom of the page and intended to help, was invalid. I read this to mean false, null, illegal. The opposite of valid. But it was meant to be understood as invalid as in a sick person. It torpedoed my entire translation. Instead of tending to the sick, priests were being accused of fraudulence and neglecting their duties. Even though it didn't match up with the grammar, or the story, I kept on returning to that word to check, and every time I saw it only as I had done already - invalid, null, void. — Olivia Sudjic

People often mistake New Yorkers for rude and mean, but they're really just no-nonsense and efficient. They don't have time, regularly, to be warm and friendly with everyone who crosses their path. Nothing would ever get done. But when the chips are down, when it matters, they drop their cool exteriors and become unabashedly human. — Sari Botton

We get done with the game, and it's an absolute downpour 30 minutes later. That's when I thought God was telling me that's enough-time for you to go do something else. — John Elway

Like the railroads that bankrupted a previous generation of visionary entrepreneurs and built the foundations of an industrial nation, fiber-optic webs, storewidth breakthroughs, data centers, and wireless systems installed over the last five years will enable and endow the next generation of entrepreneurial wealth. As Mead states, "the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was to get a company going during the bubble". Now, Mead says, "there's space available; you can get fab runs; you can get vendors to answer the phone. You can make deals with people; you can sit down and they don't spend their whole time telling you how they're a hundred times smarter than you. It's absolutely amazing. You can actually get work done now, which means what's happening now is that the entrepreneurs, the technologists, are building the next generation technology that isn't visible yet but upon which will be built the biggest expansion of productivity the world has ever seen. — George Gilder

The worse thing I have done in my life is Diary writing ... a wastage of time, wastage of papers filled with some imaginary feelings and bunch of silly activities done each day ... I cant feel any glimpse of appreciable work done by me, as whatever right I did, my Diary says " you were suppose to do it, so it was not a big deal ... huhhh ... "
I passed my last few nights in reading most of its pages ... "I laughed on the lines telling about my saddest moments and nights when I cried ... .. but I felt woeful and downhearted on the lines telling about the moments when I shared my smile with someone, when I enjoyed the moments with my friends and near and dear ones, who r far and far now, and we can't get those moments back in this busy selfish life"
So now its better in busy life to live evry day and forget it in night ... enjoy life ... save papers ... no diary writing from today ... Sorry Diary, You will Miss Me ... — Saket Assertive

I left Stone Sour in '97 because, by that time, we'd been together for about five years and I was kind of getting to the point where I wanted to do something different. I loved the music that we did and I loved the guys that I was with, but I was 24 and just felt like I needed to go and try something different so I didn't get stuck where I was, you know, just doing the same thing. And, coincidentally, that's when Slipknot came and asked me to join. I'd never done anything like Slipknot up until then, so I was like, "Okay, we'll try this and we'll see what happens." And it worked out. — Corey Taylor

No, I'm not one of those guys. I'd never get anything done if I rescued everyone who needed it. But I do like to help people I care about. That's why I'm here with you right now. — Lisa Brown Roberts

The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story's flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it's almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you've already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks. — George Stephen

The problem began with his telomeres. What is a telomere? Picture the little plastic bits on the end of your shoelaces. Imagine each time you tie your shoes, you have to clip off a little bit of that plastic part to get it to go through the lace holes. After you've done this enough times, the plastic tip is gone and the shoelace starts to unravel. Once the laces unravel enough, it's impossible to tie your shoes, and you walk around looking like a goober. — Scott Sigler

Nobody from my label called any of their labels to get this done. Most of it happened very naturally. Mary and I have been friends for a long time. Then Jay-Z offered. — Angie Martinez

I like living at home: I've been making films since I was 12, when I played Sam in 'Love Actually', and if you spend as much time away on set as I have done, you get your independence young, so it's nice to come back home. — Thomas Brodie-Sangster

It goes against an artist's grain to retire. But whether he retires or not, he will age ... What work will get done in the remaining time? ... Can he find a little peace in this twilight? Or must he still rush on, restlessly and hungrily, to the very end? — Eric Maisel

You are thinking about where your brain is at any time. It's very tricky but it's why women are very well suited to rule the world in the future, because of the multi-tasking they do and their ability to be moving in 15 directions at once. It's the women who behave like men, who focus in that singular way with the blinkers on, who have problems. You get a lot more done that way maybe, but you also lose the perception of who's behind you, what's going on, the 360 degrees of it, the whole picture of life that we do have as women. — Meryl Streep

It meant a lot because it was my first time to compete as a senior at that meet, which was kind of weird because I've done senior all year, but I didn't get to compete last year because of my elbow. — Carly Patterson

I'm one of those low-maintenance people - let's get it done and get going. It's not that painful to wax, but ... I don't have time for it - just give me the razor. — Elisha Cuthbert

I drove to Liberty Park, just south of downtown, and within minutes, Henry had his kite out and was urging LeBron James into the air.
"He's done this before," I said in surprise.
"Not in forever. I can't remember the last time, actually," Millie replied. "Is he doing it?"
"Listen," I said. "Can you hear it?" I listened with her, straining for a sound that would connect her to the visual. Then the kite dipped, caught the wind again, and lifted, making a soft, wop wop in the air, like laundry on a clothes line, flapping in the breeze.
"I hear it!"
"That's Henry's kite. He's a natural."
"Will you help me get mine in the air? I could take off running, but that might be dangerous. I don't want to run head first into the pond. There is a pond, isn't there?"
"Just run away from the sound of the ducks. — Amy Harmon

I know what I have to do and I plan to do it. It's a good time to get it done and get it behind me. It's treatable, so why not treat it now? My family will give me comfort but I have to do this alone. — Don Baylor

You see, when we met I thought, "There's a brown mouse of a girl with a sharp tongue," and then before I knew what was happening I was in love with you. Oh, I did my best to ignore it, and I thought that if I ignored you too I'd be safely back in my bachelor state in no time - only it didn't work out like that. You were under my skin, in my bones, my very heartbeat. And I'd gone out of my way to make you dislike me so that it would be easier for me to get over you. Only I haven't done that, my darling. — Betty Neels

I'll go anywhere and I'll do whatever it takes to get this done. It's too important for Washington to screw this up. Now's the time for us to work on what we all agree to, which is let's keep middle-class taxes low. That's what our economy needs. That's what the American people deserve. — Barack Obama

Men marry women who see through their bullshit, and women marry men they can't seduce, at least according to Lou. It's the only way you can live with each other over long periods of time and get things done, raising kids and buying houses and all the other nonsense of matrimony and human striving.

To Judith, this was a depressing thought. She wanted to marry a man who was so crazy for her he couldn't see straight. — Karin Goodwin

My favorite author's question of all time - because it's so simple to answer ... 'Is your hair really like that, or do you get it done? — Margaret Atwood

When I was younger, I just put off the writing until later in the day, but now I write early every morning to get it done. I can only write for a few hours at a time; after that, my attention fades. — Patrick Modiano

I had a scene where the chair was meant to slide off the table, but do you think it would slide off? No. We were running out of time and we had to get these scenes done urgently. — Dannii Minogue

What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is earnest. We live in a practical age. All around us we see foreign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf? What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good? — P.G. Wodehouse

My husband said 'show me your boobs' and I had to pull up my skirt ... so it was time to get them done! — Dolly Parton

... In a ROWE* people don't have schedules.
They show up when they want.
They don't have to be in the office at certain time, or anytime.
They just have to get their work done.

How they do it ?
When they do it ?
Where they do it ?
It's totally up to them.

Meetings & this kind of environments are Optional.


What happens ... ?

Almost across the board !
- Productivity goes up
- Worker Engagement goes up
- Worker Satisfaction goes up
- Turnovers goes down


- Autonomy .. Mastery .. Purpose -
these are the building blocks of new way of doing things."


*ROWE: results-only work environment — Daniel H. Pink

Okay, I've never done this. This is the guy's department. What do I do? We need to get Lee's size and we need industrial strength. Show me which ones to buy."
Eddie looked at the display and looked at me. "You're askin' me to help you buy condoms for Lee?"
"Industrial strength condoms," I reminded him.
...
"Let me get this straight," he said and I could tell he was laughing, "you dragged Eddie to Walgreen's to help pick out condoms for me?"
"Well, I didn't know!" ...
"Did you tell Eddie the part about long-lasting reliability?"
Oh Lord.
"Forget it," I said.
"Indy?" he called.
"What?" I snapped, kinda pissy.
"I love you." He still had laughter in his voice and there was something very cool about him laughing and saying I love you at the same time. — Kristen Ashley

The spring is here, young and beautiful as ever, and absolutely shocking in its display of reckless maternity; but the Judas treewill bloom for you on the Bosphorus if you get there in time. No one ever loved the dog-wood and Judas tree as I have done, and it is my one crown of life to be sure that I am going to take them with me to heaven to enjoy real happiness with the Virgin and them. — Henry Adams

We can talk about it all we want. But there comes a time when you just have to get it done and quit talking about it. There's been a lot of talk here and not enough doing. — Todd Helton

Once you know a habit exists, you have the responsibility to change it ... others have done so ... That, in some ways, is the point of this book. Perhaps a sleep-walking murderer can plausibly argue that he wasn't aware of his habit, and so he doesn't bear responsibility for his crime, but almost all of the other patterns that exist in most people's lives - how we eat and sleep and talk to our kids, how we unthinkingly spend our time, attention and money - those are habits that we know exist. And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work. — Charles Duhigg

I'm mentally getting myself ready to talk about it all year long because I know it's going to come. My main focus is not to really concentrate on that ... So many things have to line up, to be healthy and consistent for so many games, to get to that point. I know as we get closer we're going to talk about it more. But believe me, when it's done, if it gets done, it will be a huge achievement and I'm definitely going to soak it in. But at this time, it's not at the top of my mind. — Anthony Calvillo

With every project I've ever done, I've always treated it like I'm still in school. Each time you try to go a little further, get a little deeper, feel a little more, sculpt it a little better. — Kim Basinger

I think every time a movie gets made, it's a miracle. I would love to get to a point where it became easier and it wasn't so much of a struggle to get it done or finished. — Chris Colfer

Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done. — W. H. Auden

With Twitter, it's a little harder to tell jokes that somebody hasn't heard already. You have all these people out there sharing their opinions and telling jokes in real time, and by the time you get on, somebody's already done some version of what you're trying to do. — Frank Caliendo

I love the sitcom schedule. It takes a week to make an episode, but we don't work on weekends. I'm usually done in time to get home for dinner with my wife and daughter. — David Alan Basche

It took Sydney Pollack a long time to get me to do Tootsie. I asked myself if I wanted to play some frothy, ditzy character after I had just done Frances. Obviously, I'm thrilled that I did. — Jessica Lange

He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore. — Lev Grossman

We pay a lot of money to get a tank with a few tropical fish in it and never tire of looking at their brilliant iridescence and marvelous forms and movements. But God has seas full of them, which he constantly enjoys. (I can hardly take in these beautiful little creatures one at a time.) We are enraptured by a well-done movie sequence or by a few bars from an opera or lines from a poem. We treasure our great experiences for a lifetime, and we may have very few of them. But he is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right. This is what we must think of when we hear theologians and philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life. — Dallas Willard

Even though he had admitted to her that he used to watch me shower through a hole in the bathroom wall back when I was thirteen. She blamed us both for what we had "done" to her. But it sounds like she got over being mad at him pretty quick. She later told me that she had to go back and have sex with him one more time, just to make sure that there was nothing left between the two of them and to get some closure. That almost made me want to vomit. The only interaction between us after that was her showing up at the courthouse when I had to sit in front of a grand jury of twelve strangers and tell them what had happened. She came into the waiting room where I was sitting and started screaming that I was a whore and that I'd fucked her husband. She had to be escorted out of the court by two officers. That's what I got from her. — Ashly Lorenzana

What have I ever had to do in my life that really
needed to be done? I always had a choice, and I always took the easy way
out - we always took the easy way out. At our age the burden of double
maths on a Monday morning and finding a spot the size of Pluto on my nose
was as complicated as it ever got for me.
This time round I'm having a baby. A baby. And that baby will be
around on the Monday, on the Tuesday, on the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I have no weekends off. No three-month holidays.
I can't take a day off, call in sick, or get Mum to write a note. I am
going to be the mum now. I wish I could write myself a note.
I'm scared, Alex.
Rosie — Cecelia Ahern

My skills weren't that I knew how to design a floppy disk, I knew how to design a printer interface, I knew how to design a modem interface; it was that, when the time came and I had to get one done, I would design my own, fresh, without knowing how other people do it. That was another thing that made me very good. All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I'd never once done that thing in my life. — Jessica Livingston

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families
only to find that by then their families were gone. — Larissa MacFarquhar

A man is an island, but the water is deep
And the shore on the other side is ragged and steep
To look for perfection is a lonely old ride
It takes a whole lot of courage and a whole lot of pride
When you look for independence and you get what you want
How come you look back, thinking what have I done?
But time and again, it dawns on me
It's the price we pay for liberty
I should have know, we all need a place to call home — Joey Tempest

The greatest opportunity of our lives is to wake ourselves up and get going. There is so much to be done and so little time to do it. We should impress ourselves with the seriousness of slothfulness. — Sterling W. Sill

We were born ahead of our time. Don't forget that the riot-grrl scene had a lot to do with making The Slits a legend, and that didn't happen until the early '90s. We couldn't get together before then, because the legend hadn't been built yet. In the 2000s, we've become bigger than life in that way. It's become really important for The Slits to be here now, but idealistically, we should have done it in the '90s. — Ari Up

I liked working with Republicans. We had five pretty good years after we had that bad year in '95 that culminated in two government shutdowns. But then they really decided that they liked being in the majority for the first time in forty years, and they wanted to get some things done, and I agreed, to get things I wanted. It was all perfectly transparent. Everybody knew what they wanted and what I wanted. — William J. Clinton

Writing is hard work, not magic. It begins with deciding why you are writing and whom you are writing for. What is your intent? What do you want the reader to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it. It's also about making a serious time commitment and getting the project done. — Suze Orman

Parents love bathtime because it means that bedtime is near. To prepare your darling for her bath, put on your full-length poncho, because toddlers don't bathe, they splash, motherfucker. When toddlers bathe, they act like they're a junior member of the summer Olympics diving team. Get ready. By the time you're done, your bathroom floor will have a few inches of standing water. The good news is that wiping up all that water counts as mopping the floor. — Bunmi Laditan

Yes, I'm old," Henry said, and folded his arms. "Old enough to have made cemeteries of men younger than you. Killed in wars. Killed in peace. Knifed and shot my way most of my life. Killed Indians and white men with my hands or the guns I took from them."
Another step, his arms unfolded.
"I get paid to bring in escaped men that have done worse."
One more foot.
"And there is nothing in you that don't stand thin against me, and you know it. And this ain't the forst time I've had guns against me and you know that too."
He looked at them all, weighed them all.
"And I'm done talking. — Robert Lautner

Possess the spirit of independence. The Americans do, and why should not you? Possess the spirit of men, bold and enterprising, fearless and undaunted. Sue for your rights and privileges. Know the reason that you cannot attain them. Weary them with your importunities. You can but die, if you make the attempt; we shall certainly die if you do not. The Americans have practised nothing but head-work these 200 years, and we have done their drudgery. And is it not high time for us to imitate their examples, and practise head-work too, and keep what we have got, and get what we can? — Maria W. Stewart

Not only is this workaholism unnecessary, it's stupid. Working more doesn't mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more. Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve. First off, working like that just isn't sustainable over time. When the burnout crash comes - and it will - it'll hit that much harder. Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions. — Jason Fried

The fact that Ridge has been honest in his conversations with me is not something he did wrong. The fact that he has feelings for me also isn't wrong, when you know exactly how much he's fought those feelings. People can't control matters of the heart, Warren.
They can only control their actions, which is exactly what Ridge did. He lost control once for ten seconds, but after that, every single time temptation reared its ugly head, he walked in the other direction. The only thing Ridge has done wrong is fail to delete his messages, because by doing so, he failed to protect Maggie. He failed to protect her from the harsh truth that people don't get to choose who they fall in love with. They only get to choose who they stay in love with." I look up at the ceiling and blink back tears. "He was choosing to stay in love with her, Warren. Why can't she see that? This will kill him so much more than it's killing her. — Colleen Hoover

For a long time, it was hard for me to get my work done in Chicago. Silk Road gave me opportunities to do shows like 'Golden Child' - shows that nobody else seemed interested in. And they bring an artistic integrity to the work that matches anything you'll find at a bigger theatre. — David Henry Hwang

When people go to a track meet, they're looking for something, a world record, something that hasn't been done before. You get all this magnetic energy, people focusing on one thing at the same time. I really get excited about it. It makes me want to compete even more. It makes it all worthwhile, all the hours of hard work. — Steve Prefontaine

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once to get over the fear of doing it. Twice to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not. — Joyce Meyer

For first-time vagabonders, this can be one of the hardest travel lessons to grasp, since it will seem that there are so many amazing sights and experiences to squeeze in. You must keep in mind, however, that the whole point of long-term travel is having the time to move deliberately through the world. Vagabonding is about not merely reallotting a portion of your life for travel but rediscovering the entire concept of time. At home, you're conditioned to get to the point and get things done, to favor goals and efficiency over moment-by-moment distinction. On the road, you learn to improvise your days, take a second look at everything you see, and not obsess over your schedule. — Rolf Potts

Over time I've learned, surprisingly, that it's tremendously hard to get teams to be super ambitious. It turns out most people haven't been educated in this kind of moonshot thinking. They tend to assume that things are impossible, rather than starting from real-world physics and figuring out what's actually possible. It's why we've put so much energy into hiring independent thinkers at Google, and setting big goals. Because if you hire the right people and have big enough dreams, you'll usually get there. And even if you fail, you'll probably learn something important. It's also true that many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. So you need to force yourself to place big bets on the future. — Eric Schmidt

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

Soaps have a schedule where you have to be done in 15 minutes. With an hour show, there's no way to get off schedule. On a movie, it's a lot easier to go back and reshoot scenes. I wasn't used to that at all ... taking the time to really make each scene as good as it can be, which you can't do on soaps. — Lucy Deakins

What if I hadn't worked so hard? What if ... I had actually used ... my position to be a role model for balance? Had I done so intentionally, who's to say that, besides having more time with my family, I wouldn't also have been even more focused at work? More creative? More productive? It took inoperable late stage brain cancer to get me to examine things from this angle. - Eugene O'Kelly, former CEO, KPMG — Brigid Schulte

Any time he'd asked that question of a D.C. native, they looked at him like he had two heads and said that's the way they'd always done it. Still, didn't they get that it was confusing to out-of-towners? — Marie Force

When anger comes to you, it is not going to kill you. It has been with you many times before, and you have survived perfectly well. It is the same anger that you have been through before. Just do one thing new, which you have never done. Instead, every time you get involved with it, fight with it. This time just watch as if it does not belong to you, as if it is somebody else's anger. And you are in for a great surprise: it will disappear within seconds. — Osho

But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best. — Baden Powell

wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She — Cheryl Strayed

When I get kind of low, I'd think about a verse I learned at one time, when everybody was fighting me. It went something like this: He has no enemies, you say, My friend, the boast is poor. He who hath mingled in the fray Of duty that the brave endure Must have foes. If he has none, Small is the work he has done. He has hit no traitor on the hip, Has cast no cup from perjured lip, Has never turned the wrong to right, He's been a coward in the fight. — Studs Terkel