Quotes About Work

It's tricky to ask a filmmaker to explain his own work; usually we're the least qualified to make sense of what we've done, unfortunately, because of the tunnel vision required to create anything over four years.

Unfortunately for critics and audiences alike, I have made several films, and some films with really terrific actors. And I say this at my own peril, but Marion Cotillard is the best actor I've ever worked with.

Unfortunately, teatime in London is when people in Los Angeles arrive in their offices and pick up the phone.

I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I've been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that's meant a life of one-nighters.

I was just finishing up 'Spotlight' in Toronto - I finished it on a Tuesday and started 'True Detective' on a Friday. So I was missing rehearsals, unfortunately, which I hate and why I never like to work back-to-back.

The real work of an actor goes on inside, and I don't think it changes from director to director - I always go for broke! But I don't get a lot of direction, unfortunately.

I've had such an amazing opportunity to work on so many different types of projects that continued on to Broadway. Unfortunately I didn't always continue on with them. Still, you know, I always had such a great pride in kind of helping the authors and directors create the show.

I don't listen to music when I write. If I do, I usually end up giving it my whole attention, which means, unfortunately, I don't get much work done!

Over 90% of people go home at the end of the day feeling unfulfilled by their work, and I won't stop working until that statistic is reversed - until over 90% of people go home and can honestly say, 'I love what I do.'

I am all right when I work. I am not superficial and I am not ungrateful.

It would be very ungrateful of me to turn my back or stop doing work in Latin America.

It's a cliche, but the people who enjoy your work and who come up and say, 'I enjoyed that and I liked that,' they are the people who ultimately are keeping you in work. And so, it would be rude and ungrateful of me to be anything but polite.

The billable hours is a classic case of restricted autonomy. I mean, you're working on - I mean, sometimes on these six-minute increments. So you're not focused on doing a good job. You're focused on hitting your numbers. It's one reason why lawyers typically are so unhappy. And I want a world of happy lawyers.

People from my father's generation didn't have the luxury to be unhappy in their job.

I know for a fact that a lot of actors are desperate and unhappy if their careers are not progressing at what they think is the correct rate. They just go crazy if they're not working. I don't feel I'd be that way. You can always get a few people together and put on a play. Maybe not in New York or L.A., but in a lot of other towns, you can.

I hate the school of thought that says work is work and that you have to be unhappy at work because that's what work is. I totally respect the fact that not everyone has the choices that I have, and that some people have to work jobs that they don't like because they don't have any other options.

When I first had a child, I really had a hard time trying to figure out how it was all going to fit together. Because I felt like, when I was with him, I wanted to be writing and I should be writing. And when I was writing, I felt like I should be with him, and wanted to be with him. So I was unhappy a lot.

I think it must be awful not to work. My only point in being idle is to rest so that I can work more... I'm only unhappy when I'm not working.

I hate when people say, 'Oh, they laughed all the way to the bank.' That's nonsense because the most cynical, unhappy people are Hollywood screenwriters. They earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for work that's never made.

I've worked on sets that were unhappy.

People don't tend to be unhappy in jobs doing something that they love, so I think it's important that those entering the world of work for the first time are given as much information as possible on how to get into the career that they want.

I don't hold any contempt for people who are practicing law. I know how hard it is, I know how hard they work, and I know some of them who are so unhappy with it.

You cannot measure the minute nuance that makes the difference between being happy and unhappy at work.

Psychology is much bigger than just medicine, or fixing unhealthy things. It's about education, work, marriage - it's even about sports. What I want to do is see psychologists working to help people build strengths in all these domains.