Famous Quotes

"Before I was married, I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers."

Ayelet Waldman on Failure

More quotes about Failure

• "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

  Theodore Roosevelt on Failure

• "I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."

  Michael Jordan on Failure

• "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

  Calvin Coolidge on Failure

• "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."

  Abraham Lincoln on Failure

• "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

  Steve Jobs on Failure

More quotes by Ayelet Waldman

• "By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat."

• "Despite the fact that in America we incarcerate more juveniles for life terms than in any other country in the world, the truth is that the vast majority of youth offenders will one day be released. The question is simple and stark. Do we want to help them change or do we want to help them become even more violent and dangerous?"

• "By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins."

• "Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful."

• "As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful."