Quotes About Opportunity

I used to sit in bed at night and flip through design-school catalogs. I found out that Parsons accepted a small number of high school juniors, so I applied my sophomore year and got in.

Directors didn't know what to do with me in college. I didn't really sound like a belter. I didn't look like a soprano. But in New York, I was in the right place at the right time, where my unusualness fit the bill.

Oprah Winfrey gives you the stage? Shut your mouth. I said, 'I'm sorry for taking over your show.' She said, 'No, that's why we have you here.'

I applied to NASA four times. And finally, they said, Wally, you know, we're sorry, but you don't have an engineering degree. I said, well, I'll get one.

I have two choices: Sit at home and feel sorry for myself, or make lemonade out of lemons.

Actors very often are people who think it's always about 'me,' and I can see why! No one else is going to support you or say, 'Gosh, I'm sorry about that,' or, 'Here, let me give you a job.' It doesn't happen that way.

You know, I feel sorry for the young artists.

I've had a fantastic career playing great parts. In many ways, the colour of my skin has been an asset because I've been asked to play certain roles as a result. I don't apologise for playing them anymore than Robert de Niro is sorry for playing American-Italians.

I cannot hide being sorry for failing to move to Juventus.

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

I don't feel sorry for myself, because I'm living my dream. Even when I was a little boy I used to stand in the playground and pretend I was on 'Opportunity Knocks.'

A lot of the times when I've auditioned for parts in America, the answer is, 'Sorry, we need a bigger name.'

No one's going to feel sorry for me because I've been so blessed.

I had the most frustrating thing happen when I was trying to find a label. I sent my album to this indie label, and they were like, 'We already have two girls on the label. I'm so sorry, we just can't take your project.'

In America, you can't say to your family, 'Hey, I'm off to L.A. to make it as a songwriter; sorry I can't pay for the dentist.'

Oddly enough, Asians are a much smaller 'minority' than African Americans in this country. But because Asians are so successful, college admission officers don't feel sorry for them, so they are not a preferred 'minority.'

Nobody in the developing world is going to take, as an answer to their aspirations, the developed world's reply: 'Sorry, you can't; we've already used it all up.' To earn the right to look the developing world in the eye and start this conversation, we need a reassessment of how we live and what we want.

I've been really lucky to play sort of a diverse array of characters over my relatively short career, although it feels really long.

I think O. J. Simpson was a very prominent figure in the African-American community. He was sort of a manifestation of the American dream: 'If it can happen for him, it can happen for me.'

I think that, on the whole, risk-taking entrepreneurial characters regard nature as a sort of background that we can use for our own advantage.

The Open Skies issue is something that's ongoing and we understand that there are issues in Australia that need to be sorted out. It's something that I think over time there's an opportunity for us and we'll work on that in a progressive way.

I'd just got back from filming my role as Flo in 'Kidnap & Ransom' when I got the news that Channel 4 had re-commissioned 'Fresh Meat,' so I think it was the first Christmas I could actually relax knowing that I had three months' work sorted. As an actor, that's always a good feeling.

It's not ideal; I don't want to get a bad decision. If I win the fight, I expect to get my hand raised at the end of it. But, if people see it's a bad decision, it gets sorted out. You get another shot, or you fight someone else at the top level.

The country has sorted itself ideologically into the two political parties, and those partisan attachments have hardened in recent years. It will take an extraordinary event and act of leadership to break this partisan divide. I thought 9/11 might provide such an opportunity, but it was not seized.