Quotes About Ambition

When I was 16 I told my dad I wanted to be a pop star. He told me, 'I'll give you until the end of the summer. If you're not earning money by then, you're going back to school.'

During my career I've come back to clubs after the summer break to see one of my team-mates not really at it because he's been denied a move to a bigger club for whatever reason, and you can see in his body language that he doesn't want to be there and that kind of thing is massively disruptive and negative.

I remember watching the summer Olympics as a kid and knew that I wanted to be an Olympian one day. At the time, snowboarding wasn't in the Olympics, but I knew that wouldn't stop me.

If your kids attend school and grades are up that will make $1,000 contributions to some 10,000 kids across the country, are challenging kids to learn foreign languages or challenging kids to get summer jobs or seek summer enrichment opportunities?

I started taking ballet lessons when I was 4, and I was performing in ballet companies when I was 10, and I did summer stock in Miami Beach when I was 12, and finally I said, 'I gotta go to Broadway.'

The first dream I had was just to get a college education. I got through college in three years, taking extra classes in summer school.

I had been doing all my school plays, elementary school, middle school, and high school, and then summer. I'd wanted to act for a long time, and I thought I was going to go to college and do theater, go that route. But 'Superbad' kind of fell on my lap. I was very, very lucky for that.

When I was 23 and about to go to law school, I thought I'd spend the summer writing a novel.

So I majored in Drama, did all the plays that were possible to do, skated through school in order to be in every production on stage or backstage in whatever capacity and I came to New York looking for work in the summers.

10 Summers isn't just a label, it's a lifestyle.

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.

It's not easy to reach the summit of your career by the age of 24 - and for the years after to be a humiliating scrabble downhill.

Once you have conquered your profession and are standing at the summit, it is all very well to look back down the slope and indulge yourself with regrets.

I'd love to have another film to go on to. I'm in the mood to work. But I have to be patient, you know, to find that particular kind of project. Occasionally I'll write one myself if I can summon up the energy.

If you want a place in the sun, you have to expect a few blisters.

I consider myself a laborer, building my career brick over brick under the sun.

When I was really young, I wanted to grow up and be the sun. Which shows an early penchant for ambition or narcissism or grandiosity or delusion - all of which are bellwethers for becoming a writer.

I like to look at 'A Place in the Sun' every now and get inspired by it.

If our kids want to do music, they are going to have to have a hard row to hoe just like any other band under the sun, and they're going to have to want it more than anyone else.

I had to turn down a part in 'Empire of the Sun.' It would have paid £15,000, which was a year's earnings for me then, but I was offered a season at the 'National Theatre.'

I thought I'd go away and make one album, but it was extended. The album did so well, and they wanted another album. I was on a high. You make hay while the sun shines, and I was doing it, and you think about yourself; that's what you do.

I couldn't get a job to save my life. That's why I wrote 'Road to Paloma.' That got into Sundance and got into that scene, and that's how I got the role in 'The Red Road.'

I had to live on $17,000 a year until I was 33, because I was a failed artist until I was 29, when I made my first short film that went to Sundance.

I think it's probably a normal dream for an actor to be like, 'My movie's premiered at Sundance!'