Completion Quotes

Everything stinks until it's finished.

I must keep on trying, just to keep the experiment going until I get tired of it all. Even if the last result is not necessarily the best, I stop when my interest in the problem wanes.

The words come. Usually, it's a long time before they come. And then when they start to come, it doesn't take so long for it to be finished. It takes a long time to begin. And then it sort of gets finished.

When asked how she knows when her writing is where she wants it to be: "I know when it's the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it's the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that."

On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.

You will never see the end, if you give up in the middle

If you have done the best you can do and if you have gotten all you could extract from something, you have given all you had to give, then the time has come when you can do no more than say thank you and move on.

A very little little let us doAnd all is done.

Finish every day and be done with it.

What is once well done is done forever.

That complete statement which is literature.

Writing is the flip side of sex - it's good only when it's over.

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job

Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.

Together, we're going to finish the job we started.

I cook every chance in my pot. And only when it is cooked through do I welcome it as my food.

There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.

The scaffolding must be removed once the house is built.

When you have accomplished your goal simply walk away. This is the path way to Heaven.

We will finish the race.

To retreat after a work well done is Heaven's Way.

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.

I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.

I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.

We 've wholly forgotten how to die. But be sure you do die nevertheless. Do your work, and finish it. If you know how to begin, you will know when to end.

Almost every evening, either I went to [Georges] Braque's studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's work. A canvas wasn't finished unless both of us felt it was.

The hardest thing is to get started, but the really hardest thing is to finish.

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

My interest in my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.

I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished. ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself.

The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.

It's a sure thing that you'll not finish if you don't start.

The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed.

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

The habit of giving up when the present task is half finished and try something else is one of the chief causes of failure.

Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.

It's pointless to be critical of your stuff once it's done. I don't spend a lot of time agonising over it. It's of no importance once it's finished.

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won

I finished your song, she said. Our last song. And I want to play it for you.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.