Trying To Work Things Out Quotes & Sayings

All films are learning processes. I am still trying to work out how you make a movie. I didn't study at film school or any of those things. I didn't bother with film theory. — Terry Gilliam

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case. — Chuck Close

All my shows are therapy, trying to navigate interesting subjects so I can work them out and to be honest and say some things are beyond the wit of this man. — Marcus Brigstocke

I always set out to just work, as an actor, and try to do as many different things as I possibly could, and not be too selective or too careful. I think just working is fun. — Jason Lee

And every faggot couple I know is deep into friendship and deep into fucking with everyone else but each other and any minute any bump appears in their commitment to infinitesimally obstruct their view, out they zip like petulant kids to suck someone else's lollipop instead of trying to work things out, instead of trying not to hide, and ... unh ... why do faggots have to fuck so fucking much?! — Larry Kramer

If you're trying to figure out why something's not working," Old Lou had explained, "just focus on the things that do work. Move through those things first and eventually you'll find the one part that's stuck. — Danika Stone

Every cancer looks different. Every cancer has similarities to other cancers. And we're trying to milk those differences and similarities to do a better job of predicting how things are going to work out and making new drugs. — Harold E. Varmus

Many people wake up in middle age with the realization that in their youthful romances and early marriages, they were drawn to precisely the kinds of partners they were trying to avoid. All too often we marry stand-ins for our alchoholic fathers, shadowy replacements for our angry mothers, surrogates with whom we try to work out our unfinished childhood dramas. Or we fall in love with someone who incarnates the virtues or vices opposite our own. An orderly man who plans his days marries a spontaneous woman who lets things lie where they fall, lives in the moment, and is perpetually late for appointments. — Sam Keen

I like making movies. I like the process. I like trying out new ideas, and if they don't work, they don't work. That's the reason I generated the money in the first place, to be able to try things. That's where I spend my money. — George Lucas

For as long as there's life, for as long as we have things happening in the world, for as long as people haven't been able to work it, for as long as people are not trying to work it out, for as long as there's crime, destruction, hate, bigotry, for as long as there is a spirit that does not have love in it, I will always have something to say. — Stevie Wonder

Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use. — Douglas Adams

I've been failing for, like, ten or eleven years. When it turns, it'll turn. Right now I'm just trying to squeeze through a very tight financial period, get the movie out, and put my things in order. — Francis Ford Coppola

You can't reinvent the wheel. You've got to just take the best from all the other shows and try to make it work, because there's the "live show Gods" that dictate if there are going to be any surprises, if there's a very commercial film that's a Best Picture. There are a lot of things that are out of my control, but I do my best. — Brett Ratner

We all faced painful ethical challenges before we even knew how to spell our names. There were tough choices. Tradeoffs. Confusing signals regarding how to live one's life. And here we are now, today, still struggling. Still trying to sort things out. Still trying to work our way through life effectively. About the only thing that has changed is the scope of the problem. There's more at stake now. And we're in a position, as grownups, to do a lot more-good or bad-for ourselves, our organization, our world. But we still must wrestle with our imperfect ethics. — Price Pritchett

I think as more people use the phones to access the Internet, they have a lot less patience for trying to find things on the search engines. That is because you need to figure a lot of things out for search to work. — Adam D'Angelo

You know you're surrendered to God when you rely on God to work things out instead of trying to manipulate others, force your agenda, and control the situation. You let go and let God work. You don't have to always be "in charge." The Bible says, "Surrender yourself to the Lord, and wait patiently for him. — Rick Warren

Trying to make certain things on the Internet totally private unless you subscribe. It's not going to work. If you can figure out how to close something down, somebody can figure out how to open it up. That's art. — Lawrence Weiner

I spent years trying to outrun myself, Mel says. Trying to make enough noise to drown myself out. It makes me ashamed to admit this. But it's okay to let yourself catch up. It's okay if you work to catch up to the things that have happened to you. You do it for yourself. But also for the people around you. The people who deserve to experience you, undiluted, honest. Your genuine self, given to them. — Kayla Rae Whitaker

The things that led me to run for office - trying to figure out how we create an economy where everybody's got a fair shot and if you work hard, you can achieve your dreams. — Barack Obama

I've always tried to present a positive view of the world in my work. It's so much easier to be negative and cynical and predict doom for the world than it is to try and figure out how to make things better. We have an obligation to do the latter. — Jim Henson

And they just slam the door. And they don't peek into that land any more. And they forget that teens and tweens are people, absolutely just as much as adults are. And their problems may play out on a smaller scale, but the things they go through are equally as valid as a CEO trying to figure out how to deal with a crisis at work. I just write for teens because I love 'em. — Lauren Myracle

Moral philosophers say things like, 'What is actually wrong with cannibalism?' There are two ways of responding to that: one is to shrink back in horror and say, 'Cannibalism! Cannibalism! We can't talk about cannibalism!' The other is to say, 'Well, actually, what is wrong with cannibalism?' Then you work it out and you tease it out and you decide yes, actually, cannibalism is wrong, but for the following reasons. So I'd like to think that my moral values at least partly come from reasoning. Trying to suppress the gut reaction as much as possible. ["Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation?", The Guardian, 9 June 2015] — Richard Dawkins

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. — Chuck Close

Since the day that our forefather and mother were exiled out of the garden of Eden, we've been lost, trying to get back in, trying to find oneness with each other and the Lord, trying to find communion, our way home. We've been trying to be found. The truth is that without Christ, we are utterly alone, and our attempts to fill our hours with goodies or texting or work or even ministry are simply futile attempts to assure ourselves that things aren't so bad after all. But at the end of the day, in the middle of the night, and at the end of our lives, without the love and work of Jesus Christ, the God-man, we are alone and we know it - and it terrifies us. Every one of us is standing on that darkened stage, condemned, lost and wandering, needing to be found. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

If you look at mainstream economics there are three things you will not find in a mainstream economic model - Banks, Debt, and Money.
How anybody can think they can analyze capital while leaving out Banks, Debt, and Money is a bit to me like an ornithologist trying to work out how a bird flies whilst ignoring that the bird has wings ... — Steve Keen

I always try to write a song to work things out with myself and I want to do it with a little punchline at the end, because I never want to remember anything bad in my life. — Amy Winehouse

I'm constantly trying to make what Stephen King called head movies or skull movies: things should be playing out on the inside of your eyes, if you will, without you having to think about me as an author being present.
I have no interest in being present, in intervening between you and the work. My job is to be as invisible as possible. My job is to say, 'Hey, I wrote this book and I'm on the cover, bye bye!'
The story should have its own momentum; it should make its own way. I have no patience for that showy kind of writing, which is all about how clever the writer is. Postmodern stuff just leaves me totally cold.
I'm much more interested in being drawn into a book, and I want to create the kind of writing which hopefully makes you turn and turn the pages. — Clive Barker

Carry on. Things will work out. If you keep trying and praying and working, things will work out. They always do. If you want to die at an early age, dwell on the negative. Accentuate the positive, and you'll be around for a while. — Gordon B. Hinckley

And people are different from animals because they can have pictures on the screens in their heads of things which they are not looking at. They can have pictures of someone in another room. Or they can have a picture of what is going to happen tomorrow. Or they can have pictures of themselves as an astronaut. Or they can have pictures of really big numbers. Or they can have pictures of Chains of Reasoning when they're trying to work something out.

And that is why a dog can go to the vet and have a really big operation and have metal pins sticking out of its leg but if it sees a cat it forgets that it has pins sticking out of its leg and chases after the cat. But when a person has an operation it has a picture in its head of the hurt carrying on for months and months. — Mark Haddon

I don't work at night. I'm not very good about working at night. I get tired during the day and I usually like to save my nights to try things out recording. — Sune Rose Wagner

As a young girl, and still to this day, I struggle with trying to figure everything out. Figure out why things happen, what they mean, and how they all work together. It sometimes drives me crazy. Not literally, but I do sometimes feel different. Like maybe I think too much. — J.W. Lord

I want the definition of startup back. To be used by anybody who is willing to take the risk to quit their corporate job and go out and try and build an innovative, disruptive, tech-enabled business that tries to change the way things work in the world. — Mark Suster

If I'd waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started "being creative," well, I'd still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are. — Austin Kleon

If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished. — Rebecca West

I try not to think about that [getting Oscar] ahead of time. You just try to do the best work you can, and then you get the movie out there, and we've been hearing good things. But you never know, you don't want to get too high, and you don't want to get too low. — Denzel Washington

Malander had an idea and was trying to work it out, but it would take him time. Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn't even realise that they forgotten. — Tove Jansson

Autobiographical writings, essays, interviews, various other things ... All the non-fiction prose I wanted to keep, that was the idea behind this collected volume, which came out about few years ago. I didn't think of Winter Journal, for example, as an autobiography, or a memoir. What it is is a literary work, composed of autobiographical fragments, but trying to attain, I hope, the effect of music. — Paul Auster

It wasn't easy for the two of us to build something out of nothing. I had that tendency toward solitude common only to children. When trying to accomplish something serious, I liked to do it myself. Having to check things out with other people and get them to understand seemed to me a great waste of time and energy when it was a lot easier to work alone in silence....Still, little, by little, the two of us learned to devote our bodies and minds to this newly created being we called "our home. — Haruki Murakami

To technical people, these seem like minor oversights that take only a minute to fix. "Oops. I forgot to change the server name to the production server." Or, "Oh, the new screens are there. I just forgot to link the button." But to users who are already feeling a bit skittish about trying out the new technology, these first impressions are a big deal. To you, these events probably seem inconsequential, carrying no inherent meaning, but to them it sets off major alarm bells. It signals things like, "This technology must be a sloppy piece of crap," and, "These IT people must be completely incompetent," and, "They must think I'm not important enough for them to check their work. — Paul Glen

If we can just let go and trust that things will work out they way they're supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself. — Goldie Hawn

When I go out and race, I'm not trying to beat opponents, I'm trying to beat what I have done ... to beat myself, basically. People find that hard to believe because we've had such a bias to always strive to win things. If you win something and you haven't put everything into it, you haven't actually achieved anything at all. When you've had to work hard for something and you've got the best you can out of yourself on that given day, that's where you get satisfaction from. — Ian Thorpe

I'm not a person who goes into a deep depression after a defeat. I try to remain reasonably upbeat. I'm realistic enough to know that results of football matches are often unpredictable and, when all is said and done, things don't always work out as one would wish! — Kevin Keegan

The process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful, we try to define the standard that we want everybody to sort of work toward, adhere to, and do it on a consistent basis. And the things that I talked about before, being responsible for your own self-determination, having a positive attitude, having great work ethic, having discipline to be able to execute on a consistent basis, whatever it is you're trying to do, those are the things that we try to focus on, and we don't try to focus as much on the outcomes as we do on being all that you can be. — Nick Saban

The truth is, the personal ends up becoming part of your professional. As an actor, much of your work happens at home as you try things out on your family. Sometimes you stay in character unbeknownst to you and keep practicing. — Terrence Howard

"Um, so, how do I work in the panties and toothbrush? I mean, it's not something you share over dinner," I pointed out, trying not to blush but feeling the heat.
"He's got his tongue in your mouth," Krys began, "and he'll have his tongue in your mouth. You're on the couch, and you'll be on the couch. When he takes his tongue out of your mouth, find a way to whisper it in his ear. That'll speed things up."
"Real quick," Twyla agreed on a short nod. — Kristen Ashley

Luck is one thing. It has always been there, it has always been a part of my success. It's a part of everyone's success. Without it, you can't be successful. But luck is something you have to stimulate, something you have to nurture through the choices you make ... That's why things have always worked out for me. Things work out not just because I'm lucky, but because I plan ahead. I figure out what I want and I go for it. I've always spent a lot of time trying to surround myself with the right people, the kinds of teammates who could lead me to my goals. — Valentino Garavani

You only live once. Trying to do the right thing for other people often doesn't work out, and you have to follow your own path in order to make things work out best for everyone. — Alison Pill

He had a simple maxim for all competitive or adversarial situations: work out what the other party least wants you to do, and then do it. Relieving your feelings was fun, but the best course of action was to make things as difficult as possible for the person trying to make things difficult for you. — John Lanchester

I go through phases as far as working out goes. I'll do yoga for a few months or then work out at the gym, and then if I'm not doing either, there are things that I usually try and do something active, whether it's trying to jump in the ocean with the surfboard or go hiking. — Sarah Roemer

As it turned out, almost every notion I had on my 13th birthday about my future turned out to be a total waste of my time. When I thought of myself as an adult, all I could imagine was someone thin, and smooth, and calm, to whom things ... happened. Some kind of souped-up princess with a credit card. I didn't have any notion about self-development, or following my interests, or learning big life lessons, or, most important, finding out what I was good at and trying to earn a living from it. I presumed that these were all things that some grown-ups would come along and basically tell me what to do about at some point, and that I really shouldn't worry about them. I didn't worry about what I was going to do. What I did worry about, and thought I should work hard at, was what I should be, instead. I thought all of my efforts should be concentrated on being fabulous, rather than doing fabulous things. — Caitlin Moran

Because it was enough for one of those favorites of His Distinguished Highness to issue a thoughtless decree. These young smart alecks see it, and they immediately imagine some fatal result and come running to the rescue. They start trying to mend things, straighten things out, patch things up and untangle them. And so instead of using their energy to build their own vision of the future, instead of trying to put their irresponsible, destructive fantasies into action, our malcontents had to roll up their sleeves and start untangling what the minsters had knotted up. And there's always a lot of work to untangling! So they untangle and untangle, drenched in sweat, wearing their nerves to shreds, running around, patching things up here and there, and in all this rush and overwork, in this whirlwind, their fantasies slowly evaporate from their hot heads. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Being fooled into trying to make things work out for 'me' is called samsara. — Sakyong Mipham

Kids who are least impressive in my class are the ones who only listen to one kind of music. They only listen to country or only to rap or to gospel or anything. It's a sad thing. I try really hard to get them to go out and listen to things. It's amazing what you learn ... I'm still trying to learn. It's not like I'm going to be a calypso singer. That's not going to happen, but I'm sure there's something in that, that I can learn from and apply to my own work. — Andy Wilkinson

If you are someone like Jeff Koons, and you have to work out how to make a big chrome heart or something, then there are lots of people and a big production involved. The money is more natural somehow. For me, I am just on my own in the studio, trying to make things work. One thing is sure: it doesn't make painting any easier. — Peter Doig

So when good leaders don't want their people to die, they spend quite some time trying to work out how to achieve things without going to war. It's that simple! — Melina Marchetta

When things aren't working out as you wish, be patient. Stop trying to move ahead of God. His timing is perfect. Trust Him. — Nicky Gumbel

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people's stuff. — George Carlin

I think it took me a little while to be true to myself as a designer, and in some ways I'm still trying to do that. I have to choose things that come naturally to me. Whenever I challenge something too much or try too hard, it never quite works out. — Stella McCartney

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere. — Madonna Ciccone

In a way, I'm always trying to do something I'm not qualified to do. So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset. — Jennifer Egan

Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use. — Herbert Spencer

What we're all sort of trying to do in our lives is to make the simplest things work out the best. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I work sometimes from outlines, which are immediately abandoned. Sometimes, when I'm trying to find the characters, I'll sketch things out a bit. Sometimes, outlines help me aim a little bit, but I tend to find it's usually much more interesting, especially with the first draft, to spew it onto the page. I used to get very nervous that, if I write this first rough draft and I die that night, whoever finds it might think that I thought it was good. For me, it's much more important to get some general shape onto the page and later take all the time I need to refine it, fix it, and rewrite it. — Paul Rudnick

There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically
we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first! — Edwin Land

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw - the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy? — Arthur Miller

The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I'm trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven't sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I'm trying to work through and get the one essential. — John Coltrane

He reached up and traced her cheek with the outside of his fingers. "Guys like me look for reasons. We look for explanations. I've been trying for hours to make sense out of this, and I only know two things. When it comes to you and Santa Claus, 'sense' doesn't work. And I love you. — Sierra Donovan

One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work - supposing you're trying to find out how a cat works
you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you've got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn't a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis. — Douglas Adams

Why do most people take the shortest route to settle their differences and just walk off, break up and go separate ways instead of trying to talk and work things out? — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

If you want to do good research, it's important not to know too much. This almost sounds contradictory but really if you know too much and you get an idea, you will sort of talk yourself out of trying it because you figure it won't work. But if you know just the right amount and you get enthusiastic about your project, you go ahead, you do it and if you're lucky things'll work out. — Ivar Giaever

One of the things I tell the writers with whom I work is, man, when you finish a draft of a poem, or short story or novel, you make sure you go out and celebrate all night long because whether the world ever notices or not, whether you get it published or not, you did something most people never do: You started, stuck with, and finished a creative work. And that is a triumph. That is something to celebrate. All the stuff that I'm talking about is really from the point of view of trying to create art - and I don't mean to sound highfalutin when I bring the word "art" in. All I mean is, a work that seeks to illuminate truth in whatever way possible. — Andre Dubus III

Yesterday I was on the edge Hoping everything was going to work itself out A good honest man doing the work of God Trying to make things better for Him A lover of life in a school for fools Trying to find another way to survive — Cat Stevens

One of the things my friends would tell you is that I hang out with a lot of non-writers - just regular people like bankers and teachers, and I actually try to steer our talk away from my work when I get together with them. — Chang-rae Lee

Days and months of holding back. Being diplomatic. Trying to figure out which way was up, and how to right a series of mistakes that weren't meant to hurt anyone. At work and in my personal life. It was all a mess, and every time I tried to make things right, I made them worse. So maybe the answer was to stop trying so hard. — Allyson Lindt

STOP TRYING TO WORK THINGS OUT before their times have come. Accept the limitations of living one day at a time. When something comes to your attention, ask Me whether or not it is part of today's agenda. If it isn't, release it into My care and go on about today's duties. When you follow this practice, there will be a beautiful simplicity about your life: a time for everything, and everything in its time. — Sarah Young

While things on the surface seem more quiet than at any time since last summer, I do not like the maintenance of what amounts to almost full mobilization in aggressor countries. Surely they cannot afford it and if they had any definite policy of trying to work out economic salvation (except by arms) they would be showing some signs of cutting military expenditures. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

I have a natural curiosity about things, in general. I'm constantly trying to find out how things work and how I can put them back together again, and why they work that way. The natural world is all around us. — Dominic Monaghan

I work with a lot of music programs and there's a steep learning curve to a lot of them. You can really find yourself trying to figure out how to do things, instead of making music. Now I have another tool with the Surface music kit. — Joe

I study her expression, trying to memorize what love looks like, just in case things don't work out. Apparently, it looks vulnerable, like a dog that's been hit by a car. Just lying there on the pavement, waiting for you to run into the street and scoop it up in your arms. — Paula Stokes

What robs you from peace? Usually it's the so-called little things in life, like being late to work, or needing a parking place, or trying to find your glasses, your car keys when you are running out the door, those so called little stressors. — Doreen Virtue