Career Quotes

My husband always felt that a marriage and career don't mix. That's why he's never worked.

I consider myself the luckiest man in the world. I have spent a lifetime doing what I love.

I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'

I believe in my gut. Most people intellectualize their instincts away, but when you feel something, you have to go for it. A Fistful of Dollars was a great instinct for me, because here I was, a guy who's doing Rawhide.

In the beginning I remember when I would spend three hours a day on MySpace just trying to comment everyone back, and now, I spend a half hour a night on MySpace just putting up new stuff and answering people back and monitoring all the fan sites, and saying hi and thank you. I'm still way on top of it. I haven't grown out of it because it'll always be something that helped launch my career, and I'm going to keep maintaining it.

Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers.

I had always planned when I started directing in 1970 that after a few years I'd get tired of looking at myself on the screen and say: "Hey, let's not do that any more." But then every once in a while something pops up. I'm not saying it won't happen again but probably the odds get less as you set yourself for roles that fit your age group.

I made the decision I will own my own show. So never again will I ever be told what I can and can not do.

I've always wanted to make a career in the arts, and I think that my only hope at doing that is to make it more about the work.

One's work usually occupies more than half of one's waking life. Choosing work that does not bring happiness will lead to a life that is mostly disappointing.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I'm still fanatical, but now I'm a little less fanatical.

I`ve not really been angling to be a comedian. I knew comics and I loved them and I loved being funny, but I didn't understand the whole concept of becoming one. My first couple of times on stage, I was like, "This is what I'm doing for sure." I was so excited.

I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. . . . He plans to be both an artist and a moralist -- a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community -- that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success.

It's an honour and a thrill and a privilege just to play in the NHL.

I'm not really a career person; I'm a gardener, basically.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too much fantasy to be only a housewife.

Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

As a career, the business of an orthodox preacher is about as successful as that of a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell.

Most of my life I have done what I wanted to do. I have had fun on the job.

Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing - if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail.

I never thought I'd be a person who would want to write books...I promise you not a single English teacher I've ever had would have thought that this would be going on right now.

I couldn't imagine a more unreliable, more unprofitable way to make a living than writing. My advice? Show up, do the best you can. Keep your day job. If you get a lucky break, don't f*** up. It was helpful to be older because I had made all the really stupid mistakes already.

When you build a career, you should never imitate anybody.

Your paycheck is not your employer's responsibility, it's your responsibility. Your employer has no control over your value, but you do.

There's one thing that I've liked over the years when I've promoted bodybuilding and fitness and my movies and politics and issues and so on is to stay focused.

The last thing I'd learn, well into my career, was how to get on, how to say hello, how to get in with the audience.

There are very few of us, who reach my advanced age, who are still working in the business, as writers. As artists, people can hang out longer.

I can quit boxing now and practically go into any kind of business and I'll be successful just as well as I was in boxing.

Winning an Oscar is an honor, but, between you and me, it does not makes things easier.

My career has been over since 1990.

I don't think of my life as a career. I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That's not a career - it's a life!

I've read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20s.’ And I know what he means, because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can't do it forever, and you don't want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.

Take the job you would take if you were independently wealthy. You're going to do well at it.

Never give up searching for the job that you’re passionate about. Try to find the job you’d have if you were independently rich. Forget about the pay. When you’re associating with the people that you love, doing what you love, it doesn’t get any better than that.

I just feel that at this particular time in my career, I've reached the pinnacle of my career, I've achieved a lot in that short amount of time, if you want to call it short, but I just feel that I don't have anything else to myself to prove.

I'm only interested in two kinds of people, those who can entertain me and those who can advance my career.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

A journalist is a reporter out of a job.

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.

Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person - hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre - into an outstanding performer.

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.

It's great at this stage in my life to still be in the running, that people appreciate you.

I’ve been really fortunate in that I guess I was hired to do A Cook’s Tour, I was already a known quantity, meaning I had written a really obnoxious book and nobody expected me to be anyone that I wasn’t already.

When I went home from Juilliard, I couldn't find acting work.

If you've found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

I have no understanding as to why you wouldn't try to make what you're passionate about work for you.

I have spent my career as a prosecutor. I've only had one client in my entire life, and that has been the people.

Unlike other people, unlike others, I have never represented a corporation. I have never represented a special interest. I started my career fighting for the people.

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

That's what I tell young actors. "You don't have to compromise. Go do some theater and wait for an appropriate role."

Too many people spend more time planning how to get the job than on how to become productive and successful in that job.

I've been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

If I'd married someone in show business, there'd be too much competition.

One thing was very clear and I made it always very clear at the beginning when I got into the governorship, and that was that I wasn't trying to become a career politician. This was not like I was going to be governor for seven years and then I was going to run for the Senate and then for Congress. That was never my interest.

I haven't had a perfect career. I've put some albums out that, looking back, I'm not super proud of, but there's also a lot of stuff that I am very proud of.

In my long and colorful career, one thing stands out: I have been misunderstood.

When you turn professional, you become an entertainer, and like every other entertainer, you don't want to get a bad review.