Quotes About Career

I applied for a job at 'The New York Times' many years ago, and felt correctly that my life depended on it.

At graduation, I assumed I'd be in publishing, but first I went to England and got a master's degree in English Literature. And then I came back to New York and had a series of publishing jobs, the way one does.

I went to New York in '87 to write for 'Saturday Night Live.'

I was on vacation in New York when my agent called asking if I wanted to go right in and audition for 'Billy Elliot,' so I was lucky to be there.

I had two jobs coming out of school: I did a play, 'The Great White Hope.' I played the boxer Jack Johnson. And I was the lead in this indie film. Then I moved to Los Angeles because New York was cold and it was really too quiet for me at that time. I was out of school; I was hungry. The auditions were trickling in, and I was antsy and ready to go.

When you have a job you know you'd do for free, it takes a lot of the pressure away to be successful at it. So if it's doing theater in New York or teaching acting, I'm down for all of it.

I had done my first picture and I didn't have anything to do for awhile. I was asked to come back to New York and do Bus Stop in the role of the cowboy opposite Kim Stanley.

'Guyism' wanted a daily video series. They told me they were planning on hiring a girl and then hiring someone to write all her jokes. Then they figured it would be easier just to get me, so they offered me $750 a month to do it, which turned into an offer to move to New York and do it full-time for $30,000 a year.

After I made my hit in 'Salome,' Universal sent me to New York so I could learn to be a proper movie star.

My grandparents actually, whenever they got the chance, took me to Broadway, but that started when I was in high school, because that's when I realized... At the very beginning of high school, I realized, 'Oh my gosh. Okay, this is a career choice for me.' So yeah, then they always brought me to New York to see Broadway shows whenever they could.

When I moved to New York City from Israel, I came here with the idea to get a great job, have tons of fun, and make a lot of money. Growing up in Israel, I watched a lot of American TV, and I thought it's what the 'cool' people did, and I wanted the same thing.

I live in New York and I love it, because it doesn't make me feel like my life is always just about acting and that world of acting. I don't have expectations.

I didn't expect to pursue acting at all, let alone TV and film, let alone New York or L.A. I was quite content doing Shakespeare out in Wisconsin.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I remember my own life as a small boy, son of Jewish immigrants, in a janitor's flat on Orchard and Stanton streets on the Lower East Side of New York City. My father made pants and doubled as janitor of a tenement - before he made janitoring at $30 a month, plus rooms, a career.

I tried to take advantage of what I could in Philly. But when it was time to move on, I moved on to New York. There, I booked a series regular role on 'One Life To Live.' I played a character named Deanna Forbes. She was my first big job. It was on daytime TV. And it was a great opportunity until that show got canceled.

I moved to New York to pursue music.

I did nothing but dramas for seven years in New York. I didn't really start anything comedic until I moved out to L.A. and found The Groundlings.

I had a nutty career. I was living in New York. Then I got to an age where my friends and sister were having children, and I started to think I needed to orient myself towards a world where it could happen.

I guess to long story short it, I was really just working day jobs when I moved to New York and trying to pay the bills, working in restaurants and as a receptionist, and at one of those reception jobs, I just got so bored, I started a blog, honing my writing skills a little bit.

That always stuck with me. When I finished school in 2015, I started going to open calls in New York. But I was getting the same response every time: 'Get your measurements down. Take X inches off your thighs and hips.'

New York, specifically, has been very good to me throughout my wrestling career.

Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at 'The New Yorker,' wrote one of the masterpieces of narrative non-fiction, 'Hiroshima.' Hersey was a teacher of mine at Yale, and a friend. He got me to see the possibility of journalism not just as a business but as an art form.

I'm a New Yorker, and working in New York was divine for me. I loved working there and going to work there, which I've been able to do three or four times in my career, and I just love it. It's my favorite.