Hello, writer!
I know your secret.
You want to see those months, those years you’ve spent studying, drafting, editing, and polishing your prose to amount to something.
If you’re being honest, you’d like to make a living through your passion.
In fact, if you’re really being honest, a part of you craves far more than just making a living:
You want bestseller status, a multi-book publishing contract, a movie deal, that beach house in the Hamptons…
Am I getting warm?
I’ll bet you don’t let yourself go there.
Instead, you keep your head down, your feet on the ground, and you peck away at the keyboard, hoping the next paragraph, the next chapter will deliver that much-needed certainty–some tangible proof that you’re on the right track, that you’ll someday arrive at your destination.
For a moment, let’s discuss that lack of certainty, that feeling you’re pushing down right now.
It’s pretty powerful, isn’t it?
And you’ve become quite adept at denying it, at placating it, at keeping it at arm’s length.
You do this because you know it’s a killer — a big fat dream killer.
After all, everyone knows writers can’t have certainty!
There’s no guaranteed Friday paycheck, no Human Resources department, no union contract offering job security.
And that lack of certainty takes its toll on you.
The worst part?
It keeps stirring up more fear.
It might as well be a mathematical equation:
Lack of certainty = fear.
It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.
And that fear gets in the way of your success, causing you to doubt yourself, to abandon worthy projects long before you finish them.
Some days, it really gets the best of you, crippling your self esteem. You begin to fear you’re not good enough, smart enough, or lucky enough.
The list goes on.
At the root of all these fears, is a common, primary fear:
The fear of failure.
And this fear of failure is so strong it causes some writers to give up.
Want to know another secret?
Every writer fears failure.
If they say they don’t, they’re probably lying.
So, how do you manage your fear of failure, your fear that all of this time and energy may go to waste? How do you keep going forward when it’s derailing your progress, keeping you up at night (or immersed in procrastination)?
That’s a great question!
And I’d love to give you a definitive answer.
Ready for the truth?
There’s no single answer to the “fear of failure” problem.
Luckily, we have clues. We have generous authors who’ve come before us–authors who’ve faced their fear of failure and come out on top. Some authors accept fear; some embrace it fully. Others try to outrun it.
They’ve become intimate with the territory.
To help you on your writing journey, I’ve compiled a list of 21 failure quotes from successful authors. While I don’t agree with every perspective, I think they offer worthy opinions for your consideration.
Evaluate the wisdom of each quote, and keep what feels right for you. I hope you find some guidance for your personal writing journey.
Read on to discover 21 quotes about failure. Save your favorites, and place them near your writing desk.
“We learn from failure, not from success!”
― Bram Stoker
“Don’t listen to the malicious comments of those friends who, never taking any risks themselves, can only see other people’s failures.”
― Paulo Coelho
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise”
― Oscar Wilde
“Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery
“I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say.”
― Trevor Noah
“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”
― Johnny Cash
“Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”
― Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Soul
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
― Thomas A. Edison
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
― Truman Capote
The next quote is my favorite. Randy Pauch, author of The Last Lecture, recommends embracing obstacles as the vehicles by which we earn our success. Something about it rings true to me.
“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
― Randy Pausch
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
― Thomas A. Edison
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
― Robert F. Kennedy
“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
― Bruce Lee
This one’s my second favorite. Thoreau helps us embrace failure as a learning tool that teaches us far more than any easy success.
“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
― Jules Verne
“Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
“If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you’re willing to risk failure. ”
― Philip Pullman
“Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place.”
― Mandy Hale
Now, it’s your turn…
What’s your favorite quote about failure?
What have you learned about failure?
Join the conversation below.
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