Quotes About Ambition

While I love musical theater, it wasn't the right fit for me. It's so competitive, and I was at such a disadvantage, having started performing when I was 17.

I got very addicted to performing. I just want to do that more.

When I was younger, I used to love the idea of writing songs and performing them live. But that was all I thought about. I didn't think about people getting to know my face.

When I was in 'Billy,' I always knew that I wanted to do something in performing. I always knew that I wanted to have a future in the performing arts. I had no idea that it was going to be acting in movies.

Before I left for Germany, I had gotten accepted to the performing arts high school in New York, which was a big dream of mine. And having to leave that was very sad for me.

I did musical theater, and I did dancing for what it was at the performing arts high school that I went to. I went to a school where I was there on a scholarship. So I think when you're on a scholarship, you always work a tad harder, or you want to work a tad harder than the next person.

All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.

I wanted to be mayor, but my party didn't want me. I was perhaps too liberal.

There's part of me that would love to wear a ruffly collar and do a period drama, but that's not going to happen. You don't have Asians in those sorts of things.

I've gone through long periods of time when there's no work for me. You wait for the next job to come along, and when it does, there's never a consideration about whether you do or don't do something.

It's funny - when I first started as an actor, obviously there were long periods of being idle and all you want to do is work. So if I ever get the compulsion to feel like I should complain or feel like I want to take a break, I just remember how I was before and be very grateful for it.

In periods when everything was going really well I may have taken my foot off the pedal and got comfortable where I was at, not carrying on to the next level.

I think Im addicted to periods of doubt and low confidence. I think you should worry if you dont have them because then youre not trying hard enough.

One of the main reasons I started writing these one-man shows was that this really evil casting director once said to me, 'you're peripheral and you'll always be peripheral. You'll come in with the zingers and have very little to do, so just accept that and take the money.'

The thing you don't dream about as a kid is all the peripheral stuff that comes with success.

In 1957, I decided: write or perish.

I don't care about money or fame or anything like that, but it would be a perk.

Anderson Cooper every night dreams about getting my job permanently really.

Everybody has will - you just have to gather it. And I guess you choose where your inspiration comes from and give yourself that permission.

I will be making films, and I'm going to keep working, no matter what I have to do. And I don't plan to ever ask for permission from anybody.

My father didn't want me to go to New York City, and I was determined to go. Learning to give myself the permission to be who I was in the world and to make my own choices was hard.

Have you watched Animal Planet? The lioness is out there hunting the zebras, the gazelles, all sorts of things, so you need to be the fierce lioness or dragon that you are. Have that inner fire. See what you want, get it, and ask nobody for permission.

I was never going to be one of those women who put their career on hold, who put their hand out to their husband to ask permission. I used to think that was the worst.

New York, for decades, offered a perpetual series of 'golden ages' to artists. You constantly had to measure yourself against the best, and you had to watch them, which meant that your imagination and also your sense of what the market could stand got very, very sharp.