Rejection Quotes

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

Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: ‘After a heavy rainfall, poems titled ‘Rain’ pour in from across the nation.’

Such a big part of this business is rejection. Each time that you get rejected, a big part of it is just staying positive – even if you don’t get the role, it’s still giving you practice. I love being able to take direction and talk with the casting directors in the room.

If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.

I remember lying in bed one night when I was 15 and deciding I was ready to go into acting properly. I’d put it off until then because I didn’t feel I was ready to handle the rejections.

It is unfortunate that in every industry, there are people who take advantage of needy people, but I would like to tell all the budding actors not to be vulnerable and always have a backup plan because rejection in auditions and films is not the end of the world.

I was a telemarketer for exactly one week in 2005. I could not take ‘no’ one more time. I could not take the rejection.

Living most of my life in New York, I witnessed plenty of nanny state laws. Later, I lived in D.C. for a bit and saw even more. I assumed when I got to Colorado, the Wild West, there would be a rejection of such intrusive legislation. I was wrong.

As a teenager, my favourite rejection was, ‘She looks too healthy,’ which of course translates as, ‘She needs to lose weight.’

Rejection is a big part of show business. It can be tough on anyone who doesn’t have fairly good self-esteem. Especially kids, as they try to discover who they are.

I’m big on the importance of science, particularly right now at this point in time when there’s sort of a systematic rejection of science by a lot of people in America.

Our rejection of the occupier at heart is resistance.

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

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.

If you’re facing rejection right now, it’s very important to realize, especially in a down market, that it’s not personal. Really. Truly. The indifference of the system is also crushing. But perhaps it’s better than thinking that someone was out to get you.

People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they’d much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.

Lately, I’ve been getting too much attention with the Met Gala and work going so well that I try to find rejection in my day. I’ll seek out someone on the street or at the farmers’ market and ask for something where I know they’ll say no. No one likes rejection, but it’s real. And I don’t want to lose that feeling.

I’ve got a very tough skin because I’ve been doing this for a long time. Rejection is simply part of it.

I’ve had those periods in my career when I was sitting around waiting for a phone call and had an agent who was doing the same thing rather than going out there to shake the bushes looking for a job for me. It’s a frustrating game, that’s the downside of this business – the rejection.

It’s the rejection that is hard. It’s not the interviewing that’s hard. It’s not the photography that’s hard. It’s, you know, approaching people all day long and having a good portion of those people reject you and some of them be rude.

A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success.

Every rejection, every phone call from my agent to say, ‘It didn’t go your way,’ I felt the layers of my skin growing. ‘OK, cool, let’s move on.’ You have to get beyond the fear of rejection and plow on because it’s intense.

It’s rare for someone to give you a helping hand when you’re going through rejection.

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.

You can make your own way. It’s about getting out there and not letting rejection get you down.

I still take losing out very seriously. But it inspires me that much more to move on. Quite often in my business, it’s not the most talented people that succeed. Because they don’t necessarily have the tenacity to deal with rejection.

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.

The strange rejection of the expert is mind boggling to me. When we’re told that the worst word in politics is ‘elite,’ I have to wonder whom else are we supposed to be rooting for if not the most qualified and smart and informed people?

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‘Lives of Girls and Women,’ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

I sent in tons of submissions and proposals, and I collected my share of form rejection letters. Eventually, I found myself working at a comic book shop, where I met my future collaborator Brian Hurtt.

Rejection is just a part of life.

It’s still incredibly hard. Not just honing my craft but kicking down doors, getting my work published. Early on, I could have wallpapered my house with all the rejection letters sent my way. I put thousands of hours and pages into four novels that never saw the light of day.

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

Yes, I was on the cover of ‘Vogue,’ but girls on the cover of ‘Vogue’ are the most scared of rejection. Models are the most insecure of them all. Actually, actors and actresses are, and then musicians, and then models!

The rejection I received when I was young for being a homosexual… that’s nothing compared to the number you do on yourself when you’ve been taught that you are not a human like other people.

I have friends that are much better actors than I am that had to quit the business because they couldn’t survive the auditions or the rejections, or people just didn’t realize how good they were.

I started doing impressions of Steve Urkel and Ed Grimley as my way of getting through the fear of rejection.

There is no level of professional rejection that can compare to almost dying.

I feel that marriage can lead to the ultimate rejection and failure and divorce and things we all fear.

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.

I have had a lot of crushes but have never had the courage to go up to a girl and say what I feel. I am scared of rejection.

The thing about stand-ups is you can’t really get good unless you’re failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can’t do anything.

For my first role, I had to audition five times. I’ve gotten a lot of no’s and rejections. But I just had to keep working hard. I took classes; I worked on my craft and continued to work with an acting coach and just didn’t give up on myself.

My story is one of ups and downs. It’s made up of tastes of success and a lot more rejection.

I had this fear of rejection. I had this inner unworthiness.

There are some people who, when they fall in love or feel envious, may easily feel rejected. Any real or perceived rejection could bring them to the edge of absurdity. Sometimes they even become liars.

Certain things will always hurt: rejection, or loss.

It’s not easy. I got lots of rejections when I first started out. If you want to write, you have to believe in yourself and not give up. You have to do your best to practice and get better.

People were being so mean as a result of my ability – a gift, really. So I think that’s what makes me fight harder to provide an option to aspiring kids or artists. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I went through… to see a little girl or a little dancer experience such unnecessary rejection.

The substance of what it means to be a geek is essentially someone who’s brave enough to love something against judgment. The heart of being a geek is a little bit of rejection.

It’s really hard for me to sometimes put myself out there, like ‘Hey, how do you feel about making music together?’ because maybe I’m afraid of rejection or I don’t want to put anybody out. It’s the Southerner in me, like, ‘I don’t mean to bother you but do you mind making a song?’

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

Save your rejections so that later when you are famous you can show them to people and laugh.

All issues, therefore, must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence. Negativity and rejection cannot be the path for a vibrant country that is moving to seek its destiny.

I need work. I still audition for work. I don’t 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’d faced a lot of rejection from labels and the industry, and it was getting hard to keep believing in myself. But something wouldn’t let me – inside – I had this voice that was relentlessly hopeful, and honestly, I just loved performing and writing too much to ever really quit.

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

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

In order to handle rejection, we have to reflect on the past, analyze/study it. Next, just like a computer, we have to reboot. Next, get it out of our system by rejecting every aspect of it.

Dissenting analysts passionate about their positions are not unusual in the American intelligence community. Their presence – or even the rejection – of their favored positions is not prima face evidence of politicization.

Being an actress and a singer, you get more ‘nos’ than you get ‘yes.’ You get more rejection than you do anything else.

There are no guarantees in the music field. There’s a lot of rejection, a lot of criticism and a lot of disappointment. You have to be prepared for that. And after 1973, it just wasn’t happening for me.

I think I’m extremely vulnerable and that in some ways I seek out rejection. Never feeling like you’re getting that pat on the back from dad is probably at the heart of that.

Rejection is never personal, so don’t let it consume you.

I heard you had to get 200 rejections before you got published.

It’s fine when you careen off disasters and terrifyingly bad reviews and rejection and all that stuff when you’re young; your resilience is just terrific.

Initially, new ideas are rejected. Later they become dogma if you’re right. And if you’re really lucky, you can publish your rejections as part of your Nobel presentation.

I actually started out as a poet in high school. I published in small literary magazines for probably about ten years. I entered the Yale Younger Poet contest every year, until I was too old to be a younger poet, and I never got more than a form rejection letter from them.

As important as hustle is, grit and resilience are equally as important because there’s a lot of rejection in our business.

Too many Christians have a commitment of convenience. They’ll stay faithful as long as it’s safe and doesn’t involve risk, rejection, or criticism. Instead of standing alone in the face of challenge or temptation, they check to see which way their friends are going.

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.

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.

You’ve got to love this business. You have to be able to take rejection.

As important as hustle is, grit and resilience are equally as important because there’s a lot of rejection in our business.

I didn’t want to read French or write it; it was like a boycott, a rejection.

I had come to regard the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations as a tragic mistake.

Very early in my life, I realised that it is okay getting rejected. Sometimes, we take rejection too personally.

There isn’t an actor alive who hasn’t been turned down, and I promise you I have taken a hell of a lot of rejection. That said, I do count my blessings every day.

I don’t think feminism, as I understand the definition, implies the rejection of maternal values, nurturing children, caring about the men in your life. That is just nonsense to me.

I don’t know if many people know that one of the first jobs that I wanted and I lined up for was cabin crew at Jet. I was rejected because I was told I don’t have a good personality. Thank God for your rejection. After that, I got a job at McDonald’s, and the rest is history.

Liberals are wrong to think that opposition to health reform is a rejection of big government. If health reform consisted of extending Medicare to everyone, people would be delighted. There are millions of 64-year-olds out there who can hardly wait to be 65.

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.

But so much of being an actor isn’t so great – the auditioning, the rejection, the financial insecurity.

The hardest thing about acting is all of the other things you have to think about besides performing… Your image, your team, networking – not to mention the mental strength you need to be able to stay unaffected by the rejection that every actor experiences.

The best thing we can do with rejection is to make it a learning experience – rejection is a great teacher.

On ‘Saturday Night Live,’ I never really wrote. You know, I would just – I would let the writers cast me into the show. So my strength – and I put all my energies into performance. I just couldn’t deal with the rejection, you know, getting your sketches cut, and it was hard for me.

In football, I learned about trust, handling failure, embracing discomfort, and rejection, which has helped with the auditions.

Nobody gets through life without experiencing some form of rejection, which is why everybody knows how awful it feels.

I’ve had way more rejections than I’ve had jobs.

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 think the best privilege that I have in terms of having them as my parents was not just the doors that opened, but, I think, the stability to be graceful in the face of rejection, which is something that actors get every single day, and knowing it’s not personal and not having that be part of your psyche.

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.

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

I have my own show at 28 and a Golden Globe. So, yes, I face rejection, but I’ve also been very fortunate and understand how fortunate I am.

In the midst of all our emotional upheaval caused by ambition, aggression, rejection, transition, addiction, limitation and competition, the one thing that remains constant within us is our deep desire to be happy.

My values – going back to my childhood – were always based on respect for all people and rejection of bigotry and racism.

Rejection is the one constant of human experience.

The first text I ever got was somebody breaking plans on a first date. That was, like, the worst way to be introduced to a new technology is with rejection.

Churchill faced his own diminishing capabilities and increasing irrelevance by maintaining the sense that he was the only one who could solve whatever problem was before him. He was very often wrong, of course, but then he had spent so much of his life overcoming appalling mistakes, disasters, and rejections.

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

For every successful actor or actress, there are countless numbers who don’t make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you’re told you’re too tall or you’re too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You’re rejected for your education, you’re rejected for this or that and it’s really tough.

The major reason for Keynes’s rejection of communism was simply that he could scarcely identify with the grubby proletariat.

Parliament is a tribal place. So the most difficult thing is to be labelled disloyal, even if you think you are standing up for a principle. The rejection is quite strong.

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.

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

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

I think with any sort of rejection, you’re angry that you weren’t enough for that person.

I didn’t have the best relationship with my dad. I was bullied in school, picked on. I remember the first time of just trying to connect with girls. It was just rejection after rejection. So I always felt ugly.

I wrote for free for, like, fifteen years; I could redo my parlor in rejection slips. It would be surprisingly tasteful – they use nice paper.

I tell young people, including my own kids, don’t do this, it’s too difficult. It’s a career full of rejection, disappointment and failure. It’s murderously hard on the ego. Don’t become an actor.

I find rejection or failure to be a really interesting and valuable experience.

Constant rejection. No security. Career paths being dictated by freelance reviewers. And of course, the terror of the writing desk, of the blank page. Why is it so hard for our non-writer friends to understand this – that it’s a job?

My 20s were a blizzard of rejection slips.

Rejection should ignite soul-searching, and the soul-searching must be absolutely honest.

I was told to avoid the business all together because of the rejection. People would say to me, ‘Don’t you want to have a normal job and a normal family?’ I guess that would be good advice for some people, but I wanted to act.

Everything’s borne out of human experience, of course – rejection, humiliation, poverty, whatever. People aren’t born bad, no matter how harsh the circumstances. There is a person in there, and that person is not made of ice.

There are certain roles that you really want to get, but you need to learn to deal with the rejection.

When I started InMobi, I was on the road raising funds. I faced 20 rejections. But when I got the funds, they came from best venture capitalists.

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.’

Attitude is your acceptance of the natural laws, or your rejection of the natural laws.

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.

The problem with being an actress is there’s a lot of rejection.

It’s important in show business to have friends who understand the cut and thrust of everyday working life and the constant rejection.

There was a lot of disappointment and rejection that came really early in my life, until I had to change my mindset and become even stronger.

But on the extremist side I didn’t get any rejections at all. Everyone agreed to talk to me.

My career has been very good to me, but really, the odds are really slim. It’s a tough life, and you deal with a lot of rejection and unemployment, and if you’re lucky to have a career, it’s not easy. So you just want to protect your kids from the pain of rejection.

I believe that rejection is a blessing because it’s the universe’s way of telling you that there’s something better out there.

I was learning the craft; I didn’t study writing in school. Rejection was my motivation, and failure is what taught me.

Cold calling is about developing social skills and getting used to rejection. We are constantly selling something to somebody.

There’s no point in dwelling on rejection.

As an entrepreneur, you’re going to get 100 rejections and one yes. That one yes will give you enough and more kick in life to continue and remain motivated.

Being brave is what led to three rejections from Yale Law School before being accepted. It led to losing my 2010 race for U.S. Congress, and another failed bid for public office in 2013, this time for public advocate of New York City.

I learned certain exercises to help me cope, to get myself in tip-top mental shape to deal with auditions and rejection.

You can’t be afraid of rejection. That was one of my problems when I was approaching girls: I was always afraid of what they were going to say to me.

Eartha Mae is very shy. She’s scared to be seen, scared of rejection and even afraid of affection. Relationships can be rather uncomfortable for her. But, as Eartha Kitt, it’s fine. I can accept and reject any time I want to. Do I ever reject? Not really. Although people think I do!

I think the rejection – if it’s taken in the right spirit, it can make you a better person. And I think that is what I’ve always striven for. If one thing didn’t work out, a project or anything, it doesn’t mean that I lose my own confidence. In fact, I give myself a lot more confidence and opportunities.