Creativity Quote by Barry Mann

Rejection is framed here not as a tragic detour but as the default setting of a creative life. Barry Mann, a songwriter who came up in the Brill Building ecosystem where hits were industrially demanded and instantly disposable, isn’t romanticizing the grind; he’s normalizing the math. The line’s power is its blunt asymmetry: “more rejection than acceptance” isn’t a pep-talk slogan, it’s a ratio. It drains the drama out of “no” by treating it like weather - constant, impersonal, survivable.

The intent reads as both warning and inoculation. Mann is talking to anyone who believes talent should guarantee welcome. In his world, taste is fickle, gatekeepers are overworked, trends shift mid-chorus, and even great songs get passed over because the wrong artist is in the room or the market wants a different mood that week. The subtext: if you need validation to keep going, you’ve already built your career on a fragile fuel source.

What makes the line culturally sticky is how it quietly redefines success. Acceptance becomes the outlier event, not the baseline expectation. That reframing protects the artist’s ego without inflating it: you can be good and still get rejected, repeatedly, publicly, and for reasons that have nothing to do with craft. It’s also a subtle call for stamina over “belief.” In pop music, persistence isn’t just virtue - it’s strategy, because the gate opens rarely, but it does open.