Rejection Quotations

The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

Don't talk about writing. Write. Don't show unfinished work to anyone. Don't show finished work to non-writers. Get your opinions, not from friends and family, but by sending your work out to editors. An endless stream of rejection slips means you need to learn more. So learn more.

I don't really have disappointments, because I build myself up for rejection.

I always feel like rejection is my petrol. That's what keeps me going.

Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.

It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead.

I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

There is going to be a hundred thousand doors slammed in your face before one opens, so feel ok about taking rejection.

It was the worst period of my life. I had all this gigantic acceptance as a kid, and all of a sudden there was this monumental rejection.

I earned my writing stripes with a large man's shoebox overflowing with rejection slips... more than 100 before I got my first, 'Yes, we want this,' accompanied by a check.

It is impossible, in my mind, to distinguish between the refusal to receive a petition, or its summary rejection by some general order, and the denial of the right of petition.

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

It was something she didn't want me to do because she thought the rejection would ruin my self-esteem. My father was, like, 'If she wants to try it, let her try it.'

I told the ambulance men the wrong blood type for my ex, so he knows what rejection feels like.

The times in my life when I've been my thinnest, I've been a walking psycho wreck. Forget the fact that I was basically starving myself; skinny was usually due to some kind of loss. Death. Rejection. Divorce.

You're going to have more rejection than acceptance.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

In my early career I was like a goldfish. Rejection didn't affect me; I'd just forget how bad it was and keep going back for more.

I need work. I still audition for work. I dont get offered things out of nowhere. I have to work hard, still, and I get a lot of rejections. It just goes on and on.

I started writing when I started acting professionally because, with acting, there's so much time when you're not working, and there's so much rejection and so little you have control of. Writing is something that you can do, and no one can tell you not to.

In elementary school, we should teach nonviolent conflict resolution and healthy communication skills, which will help children cope with issues like rejection and sexuality later in life.

We did not start a fight with America, and we don't want a war with America. If someone launches an attack, though, we will respond. We will not take rejection or humiliation. We do not want to fight.

Despite the rejection, and in violation of all the rules, I came back year after year.

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

When you are an actor, rejection and disappointment are an occupational hazard.

As a writer, the worst thing you can do is work in an environment of fear of rejection.

You well know, sir, that when the Constitution was submitted to the People of the respective States for their adoption or rejection, it awakened the warmest debates of the several State conventions.

When you're just an actor, maybe not the top of the list guys, you get constant rejection and it's fun.

Having a dance background, I became used to rejection at an early age. Dance is very competitive, especially for a sensitive person like me. But I realized it’s better not to take it so seriously. If you beat yourself up, it’s hard to keep going.

As for advice for aspiring authors, the best I can give is to be brave. It sounds like a simple enough thing, but it's not. Rejection is such an integral part of this journey, and it never goes away.

There was a danger that skeptics and opponents would misread those likelihood ratio tests as rejections of an entire class of models, which of course they were not.

You get used to the rejection and you don't take it personally.

Every candle that gets lit in the dark room must feel a little rejection from the darkness around it, but the last thing I want from those who hold a different world view to me is to accept me.

I couldn't tell you the ratio, but probably for every job you see me do, there would be 20 rejections.

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

You've got to really be able to accept the rejection.

The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.

Like every audition I go on, I do my best, but after that, I let it go because, you know, the rejection rate is so great in Hollywood, and I can only control what I do in the audition, and after that it's up to somebody else.

I've grown up seeing the pros and cons but I love it and I've always wanted to act. Throughout all the rejections at auditions, and especially when I finally did get something, both my parents have been so supportive and always told me it is all about passion and, if I was doing it because I love it, there's no wrong choice.

Look up the definition of rejection in the dictionary, get really comfortable with it, and then maybe you can go into acting.

A girl who is interested in becoming a model must first accept the fact that she is the product. She must be ready to deal with a lot of rejection.

Some actors couldn't figure out how to withstand the constant rejection. They couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Actors are no strangers to self-doubt, fear, and rejection.

Rejection just motivates me to keep trying and to try to do better.

Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.

I have faced rejection in this business because of my appearance, but that has only made me stronger and more determined.

Don't let anyone, or any rejection, keep you from what you want.

I had immediate success in the sense that I sold something right off the bat. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake and it really wasn't. I have drawers full of - or I did have - drawers full of rejection slips.

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publicatio n was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways.

All the other kids in ninth grade were drawing hot rods and cocker spaniels and getting blue ribbons in art class. I was getting rejection slips from the 'Saturday Evening Post.'

Our rejection of the occupier at heart is resistance.

So struggling for work here has been very good for me, but it's also been very hard to handle rejection.

By 17, I was submitting to publications and collecting my first rejection slips.

I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.

Well actually I don't think it's a bunch of bad things that send us to hell. I think it is rejection of God's grace.

In my work, there's a tremendous amount of rejection and waves of fertile and fallow times.

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.

Punk was a protest against work and against boredom. It was a sign of life, a rant, a scream, a rejection of bourgeois morals. But have things improved since then? Arguably, they've got worse.

Youth makes you brave, I suppose. When you're young, you make a fool of yourself all the time. Because of all the rejections and the criticism you get all the time, there has to be a drive there.

Social rejection doesn't just cause emotional pain; it affects our physical being.

One of life's fundamental truths states, 'Ask and you shall receive.' As kids we get used to asking for things, but somehow we lose this ability in adulthood. We come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons to avoid any possibility of criticism or rejection.

The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man's frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.

Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down.

I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown.

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.

No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much.

How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it.

I didn't have a problem with rejection, because when you go into an audition, you're rejected already. There are hundreds of other actors. You're behind the eight ball when you go in there.

I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say 'no.' But saying 'yes' begins things. Saying 'yes' is how things grow.

Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves.

Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened.

For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American.

Dialogue and education for peace can help free our hearts from the impulse toward intolerance and the rejection of others.

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.

Our human tendency is to be impatient with the person who cannot see the truth that is so plain to us. We must be careful that our impatience is not interpreted as condemnation or rejection.

I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit.

The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.

Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.

At the present day the crude theory of the sexual impulse held on one side, and the ignorant rejection of theory altogether on the other side, are beginning to be seen as both alike unjustified.

A lot of people ask me, 'How did you have the courage to walk up to record labels when you were 12 or 13 and jump right into the music industry?' It's because I knew I could never feel the kind of rejection that I felt in middle school. Because in the music industry, if they're gonna say no to you, at least they're gonna be polite about it.

We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.

Yes, I think especially the Pentecostal churches, you know, that there's been such a growth in Pentecostalism. And it's a rejection of the much more dour and barren kind of Calvinist worship and also, the very formal Catholic forms of worship.

Growing up in a family of actors, what's great about it is that they're very supportive and they understand what it's like to be an actor - the rejections, the highs and lows... and having a common language with them is great because you have shorthand speech.

A man's primary fantasy is access to a variety of attractive women without the fear of rejection.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to 'gamble' on an unknown.

For Christians, the problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ.

Ultimate authority in a global system remains with sovereigns. Governments will not have it any other way: politicians face instant rejection from their electorate if they allow transnational authorities to dictate terms.

Gentlemen, as sure as I'm sitting here now, the result of continuation of a non-system, the ostrich-like head-in-the-sand attitude, the constant rejection of any efforts to solve this problem, will produce an Armageddon in the American population in those states where there is a big problem.

I am fully aware of what the word 'fat' means ... It's a swear word. It's a weapon. It's a sociological subspecies. It's an accusation, dismissal, and rejection.

With this technique, we can detect the very, very early stages of organ rejection in a non-invasive way.

Don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, I just don't think it'd understand.