I was being rejected all the time. Agents would say, 'I don't think you're the type they're looking for.' I was always like, 'You think? I don't want you to think. I want them to think that.' This business is all about someone's opinion, but not the agent or the manager's. How do they know? They're not that person.
Nobody likes to be rejected, you know?
After 20 years, a million written words, and nine rejected novels, I finally landed a book contract.
Kids feel like they have to puff up or shrink. These reclusive qualities begin to develop because you feel that who you are is going to either be accepted or rejected by your family and friends.
We all serve a purpose. My purpose isn't to be rejected. My purpose isn't to think small or to be introverted. This door closed is literally pushing me to the next door.
It's okay if you get rejected 20, 30 or 200 times... You don't need everyone to like your story - you just need one person who really likes your story.
I myself was completely torn by the decision to start Teach For America. There was a voice in my head telling me not to do it - to take a more normal path. I did have one thing going for me, which was that I had been rejected from all the other jobs I'd applied to.
To be rejected on account of old age may or may not feel the same as being rejected on the basis of race or sex. But it is clearly unjust and dehumanizing, and the law should take it more seriously than it does.
My paternal grandfather was a failed novelist. He stacked boxes of rejected manuscripts in a closet.
I wholeheartedly rejected anything remotely feminine but was not enthusiastic about anything masculine, either. I did not want to cook and have babies, and I did not want to be an engineer or a baseball player or a soldier or a politician or any of the myriad careers open mostly or solely to men. I wanted to be a poet.
For many years, our Messianic Jewish brothers and sisters have paid a great price. Other Jews have rejected them, and the Christian church would require they walk away from their traditions to fit into the Gentile culture. We must face these past wrongs.
A lot of times, people are ashamed of feeling weak and being rejected - so it's liberating to be able to sing about those things. And it's amazing when other people don't feel alone because they hear it.
Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.
