Quotes About Career

A lot of my friends who started out at the same time as me ended up getting married before they made it. There's nothing wrong with marriage, but at the wrong time it can kill an emerging career.

It's probably the wrong way round, I know, but I just love maths and doing equations. When I was a kid, I was really good at it, so when I was seven, I asked my mum what job lets you do maths and pays you for it. She said accountancy, and that was it. I was dead set.

I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line.

As a society, we somehow encourage the culture of silence. We are scared to rub powerful people the wrong way for fear of repercussions it might have on our career or social standing. Apathy of authorities does not help matters.

I did everything the wrong way round. I started in an odd place, with the wrong skill set and arguably worked backwards. I began my television career in Hong Kong, making longer format films from around Asia, then I went to the other extreme - presenting local London news.

You're here to sweat. This program is live. There's about one thousand million people watching you. So, you remember - one wrong word, one foolish gesture and your whole career could go down in flames. Hold that thought and have a nice night.

I wrote for 'King of the Hill' for three seasons.

In '57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.

'Die a Happy Man' was one of those that, when I wrote it and sent it to my label, their response was, 'This is a career record.' I was like, 'Why do you think that?' I think the stars aligned.

I have some realistic humility which comes from my first career as a writer. I wrote for other people for ten years. I saw some incredible egos not based on any reality. They were great when they were on top and awful when they weren't. I learned a lot about how to treat people.

I wrote for years before I was ever published, and I don't think I could ever stop. That said, I was also a veterinarian before I sold my first book, and I still volunteer my time to help with animal welfare causes. So that is a career I would be happy to return to - while still secretly writing strange stories back in my doctor's office.

I wrote to the local news guy when I was 12 years old. I said, 'What do I need to do to be you one day?'

My mom's a lawyer. She was part of the group that wrote the bar exam. My father is a dentist. They've always worked.

I had a stage when I was 12 years old. I had a puppet show career. I wrote horror stories in camp, and all the parents called and complained.

Throughout his career, W.G. Sebald wrote poems that were strikingly similar to his prose. His tone, in both genres, was always understated but possessed of a mournful grandeur.

I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper - 'The Wall Street Journal.' I wrote longer pieces, and I got tired of working so hard on stories that had a shelf life of essentially one day. So then I started working on longer magazine pieces and realized then that you might as well be writing a book.

I wrote 'The Assistants' while I was the Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of 'Esquire.'

I was a writer for hire. I wrote to pay the bills.

I got my first real job, one that didn't involve wearing a hairnet or bending over the hood of a wet car with a towel in my hand, in the early '90s working for CBS Records. While there, I started my first of several rock bands and eventually wrote my first book, the semi-autobiographical novel, 'Don't Sleep With Your Drummer.'

The dry academic tomes I wrote very early in my career were earnest reflections of the research I conducted, the analysis I applied and the conclusions I drew. And they had few readers, mostly other academics. I learned along the way and started including more and more stories in my work.

I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.

The worst storyline I've ever been involved in I wasn't involved in, because I was clever enough to get pregnant with my second child and they wrote me out and they replaced me with Christine Jones. And thank God - that was the worst storyline.