Quotes About Ambition

I think having worked in a department store setting, if my life had not taken a drastically different turn when I became an actor, there's a very high probability I would have continued to work at the department store.

I was 17 years old when I built the first store... A very simple, basic store with a basic counter - not very much equipment, all purchased second-hand. And the menu was very simple.

I started 'American Born Chinese' as a mini-comic. I would write and draw a chapter, photocopy a hundred or so copies at the corner photocopy store, and then try to sell them on consignment through local comics shops. If I could sell maybe half a dozen, I'd be doing okay.

I worked in a record store, but I realised I didn't want that. I still wanted to pursue a career - or a life - that my songs provided for me.

Owning a bookstore was right up there with acting in life goals, but other than swaggering around the store, I'm not much use.

I didn't grow up like Quentin Tarantino, watching esoteric art films at the video store. I'd go to the multiplex and see big, mainstream movies, and I'd go, 'I want to make one of those one day.'

My parents worked harder than anyone I have ever met. They had so many businesses. There was the motel, but throughout my childhood, they also had a drive-through dairy, a gas station, a clothing store, a computer reselling business.

The way some papers write about me, you'd think I was some kind of gold digger. The truth is, I've always earned my own money. Before I became a model in Europe, I even worked in a bakery store - for $1.50 an hour. It's a big jump from a bakery store to driving a Mercedes in California, but I'm the same person inside.

I saw these new kinds of stores: the Body Shop, the Sock Shop, and I thought to myself, 'I can do that.'

I worked in restaurants, bars, record stores; I did anything and everything to pay my way through university and LAMDA.

I always want to live long enough to finish the book I'm working on and see it published. But then I start another book before the previous one is in the stores, so I always have a reason to go on.

I got the 'I don't want the normal job' bug. At home, we have countless career advisors who would tell us to work in department stores and stay below the bar and not overreach our grasp. I didn't believe any of them.

When I started out, I was more focussed on being creative and wanting to do certain things I hadn't done before. That's great if you're doing fashion as a hobby. But when you want to sell out stores, you need to be very sure of the balance between commerce and art.

Honestly, in the beginning what I imagined was driving around the country with my samples and showing them to the stores that I thought I should be in. Road tripping that is really what I wanted to do. Then I was like, 'Damn it. I have to work every day.' I don't like this, but I got used to it.

I mean, I see the old interviews with Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, these characters clawed their way up - what stories.

I want the legacy of Chi Chi Devayne to be a damn good performer that came from nowhere and took the world by storm.

When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.

My dreams of taking the West End by storm as a dancer flickered but then faded; my father's ambition to see me in a steady office job was tried and abandoned. But I had won a national speaking award, had stood for election to the local council, had begun to travel and took a job working for the Labour Party.

I hope my story inspires everyone out there to keep hustling and chasing their dreams.

Like the greats, you want to make your own story yourself, and not be a copy of another.

'Macbeth' is an amazing story.

I don't see myself only as a Somali character. I think of myself as an actor, and if the job fits me and I like the story, I will go for it.

Not many things bug me, but if there's one thing that does, it's the idea that my story is a football fairytale.

Sometimes the storyline is as simple as, 'We're just going to be the best, and we're going for the championships.