Quotes About Rejection

I'd been auditioning for parts for years. I never got any better at it. I'm crap at auditions. I know there are people who can walk into those rooms and make those lines sing on the page and get the job immediately. I wasn't one of them. I'm still not one of them.

Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.

I wasn't accepted the first time I tried to get into drama school. I said, 'I'll give this one more shot... and if that doesn't work, I won't bang my head against this painful brick wall.'

An artist can go paint, and a writer can go write, but an actor needs to get hired, needs somebody to say, 'Here, come and do this,' That's the hard part.

There are certain people I do want to absolutely dislike me. And I want them to paint me as their enemy. Because I want nothing to do with them.

The thought of Sarah Palin as president gives me acid reflux.

I live in Palm Beach, where no one wants to hear bad news.

I couldn't do 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' Ed said I was a flash in the pan, and he was right.

At sleepovers I would have panic attacks trying to break it to girls that they didn't want to kiss me without outing myself.

There are innumerable television channels and papers, all very aggressive and not willing to take no for an answer.

Most of the stuff I've written has never even gotten made. It's par for the course. It's a great living, but it also gets very frustrating.

I didn't have a parade of teams wanting to sign me, that's for sure.

The parameters are such that I don't get offered a lot of work. I'm sure most directors hear my list of don'ts and say forget it.

I was always the last one chosen for football games in Central Park.

I can't even go down to the park anymore back home in Newark, New Jersey because my homeboys won't let me play. They tell me I'm too big time, too Hollywood, so they won't let me play out there no more.

You never know when you're going to get parole. You might get knocked back, they might give you parole. That's like me trying to get into America. Are we going to let him in?

Sometimes you have to let people down in order to get on, particularly in showbusiness.

I'd get invited to parties, and instead it would be these abandoned houses.

I'm not one of those actors where filmmakers that I admire ask me to be in their movies. I meet them at parties and they're nice to me, but they never ask me to work with them.

A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.

I moved out to LA, got an agent, started auditioning. I didn't know anything about how it worked. And since I was really bad, luckily, I didn't get any of those parts.

At almost forty years old, I assumed my career on camera was over. And I was certainly given that message by all the TV managers and news directors who passed on me when I was trying to get a job back in the business.

I have scripts that I've only shown to animals... and they passed on them.

If someone who's passed on your company as an investor offers you to make introductions, that's kryptonite. Don't touch that.