Quotes About Ambition

In 1974 when I was 22 years old, I was working for $95 a week at WSPB, which was an Atlanta Braves-affiliated AM radio station in Sarasota, Florida. Fresh out of Northwestern University, I was the news director at the station, and my main bread and butter was to handle updates during the morning and afternoon drive times.

If any one idea can justly be called the American idea, it is that a child's circumstances at birth should not determine the station in life that that child will occupy as an adult.

At 14, I began working in radio. I ran the board at a little radio station in Dallas.

If you are in the Premier League or at Barcelona, Real Madrid, or Bayern Munich, you are at an end station.

As a Southerner and as a Mormon you approach life in this aspirational way: 'I will rise above my station.'

The first boss to give me a shot on-air left the station not long after I started reporting. The next boss fired me, and told me I was the worst person he'd ever seen on TV and that I would never make it. That felt like being punched in the gut repeatedly! But I pulled myself together and kept fighting for my dream.

If somebody would have told me as a kid that when I was 30, I'd get to cover the Phoenix Suns for my local station, I would have thought I had made it.

At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.

I handed out flyers in malls, candies in gasoline stations; helped set up tarpaulins in bars. I played bit roles in several indie movies. Looking back, I can say it has definitely been a long journey.

I had spent many days hungry; had slept on railway stations at times because I did not have money to pay for a hotel room... there were moments when I felt I had compromised my dignity as a human being and as an actor.

I had a job since I was 12 years old. I did everything under the sun. I pumped gas. I worked at gas stations, car washes, dry cleaners, anything and everything that I had to do to pay the bills. So for me, I know what it's like to hustle.

I never wanted to be a statistic. I never wanted to be that cat who tried and never made it.

I don't get bothered about statistics. If somebody had pointed out to me the odds of my being a working actress getting paid for what she does, I probably would have quit early in the game.

I knew the statistics of playing pro football were 1% of 1%, so I just never planned on it.

Here's the thing - I mean, I don't act for statues. I really don't. The great thing about winning an award is that it creates opportunities.

Show me a team of the stature of Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid, or Barcelona who is not obsessed with winning the Champions League. If they are not, I'd be surprised why they play in it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign raises a series of fascinating questions, the most perplexing of all being why an international star of his stature would ever want to run in the first place.

People like me might be small in stature, but they can also act.

People looking down, looking down, don't think a guy like my stature can be an All-Star. And every night I try to step out there and prove them otherwise.

Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it.

There are instances where, in my mid to late 20s, I very often found myself going for roles that they didn't want to cast me in, because I'd done good work, but in a producer's eyes, I wasn't high enough status. So I lost out.

The three-peat has never been attempted, ever, and for me, I think it will add to my legendary status. I want to become one of the greatest athletes ever to have competed in any sport, so for me, that's what it means.

It wasn't something that I really wanted or had dreamed about. Because of your socioeconomic status or your culture, you think you can't aspire to be an actress, and to participate in this medium, that sounds like a fantasy.

I will never get to Lady Gaga's status. That's not something I want.