“I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 59

Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/09/16vonnegut1.html, McSweeny's (September 2002)
Various interviews
Context: You learn about life by the accidents you have, over and over again, and your father is always in your head when that stuff happens. Writing, most of the time, for most people, is an accident and your father is there for that, too. You know, I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work. Your father won't let it happen.

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Statement made in 1961, as quoted in Voices from Cooperstown : Baseball's Hall of Famers Tell It Like It Was (1998) by Anthony J. Connor, p. 286
Context: I think if I had my life to live over again, I'd do things a little different. I was aggressive, perhaps too aggressive. Maybe I went too far. I always had to be right in any argument I was in, I always had to be first in everything. I do indeed think I would have done some things different. And if I had I believe I would have had more friends.

Source: The Princess Bride

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls