"When smart people say, "You make your own luck," what they're really saying is that luck is less mystical than it seems. The best way to be lucky is to persevere, because luck overlaps with longevity. If luck is by definition unpredictable, you have a greater chance of being lucky the longer you push."
–– Adam Alter, South African writer and professor
Source: Adam Alter. Anatomy of a Breakthrough. Toronto: Simon & Shuster, 2023; p. 30.
via: Commonplace Book 2022, 2023, p. 133.
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."
–– Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), American politician, U.S. president, architect, philosopher and lawyer
via: Striped notebook, 2016, p. 13.
"Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance."
–– James Baldwin (1924-1987), American writer and activist
"My first experience of great luck was when I was not picked up by the art market and I was left to work by my myself for about fifteen years. I did not consider that I was ignored. I considered that I was being blessed by privacy. This is very, very important to me."
–– Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), French-American artist
Source: Louise Bourgeois. Edited with texts by Marie-Laure Bernadac & Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews 1923-1997. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998; p. 144.
via: Sketchbook 20, 2012, p. 33
