Elana Meyers Quotes

I myself was completely torn by the decision to start Teach For America. There was a voice in my head telling me not to do it - to take a more normal path. I did have one thing going for me, which was that I had been rejected from all the other jobs I'd applied to.

I had to get out of the Boston area, so I flipped a coin and said, 'Heads - Miami, tails - California. I was in my mid-20s and came out here with no training. Acting wasn't even in my mind.

I think every athlete is afraid for their career to be over.

After I quit the U.S. Ski Team, there was a fair amount of, you know, grief that follows that, and I just wanted to take a year off. And I had a friend that lived in Los Angeles, said I could crash on his couch. And so I just kind of did the first really spontaneous thing I'd done in my young adult life.

Every time you start a new job, you're starting from the beginning again and it's terrifying. And you feel like you're going to be fired and told to go home and never to darken the doors of these people ever again.

I don't feel secure at all. I don't know what actor would feel they've made it. I feel like I'm just starting.

Your name or what you've done on the rugby pitch is not going to carry you through for the rest of your life. I realise I'm going to have to eventually do something else, and that does frighten me a little bit.

I left home when I was 17 with Joe Williams.

I remember my first night in L.A. I was sitting outside, looking out at the city and thinking, 'I don't know anyone.' I just approached it as a big adventure. I still think of it that way.

Although I've had several major career changes, I was extremely hesitant about making some of them.

The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

I didn't start my career or, really, my life before I came to Florida.

I left for Madrid at 20 years old and I didn't really know how it would go.

Anytime you leave something you've done and where you've been for nearly a decade, it's going to be different.

When I started at 'SNL,' I was lucky to start early. So now starting on 'Update,' I am the age when most people are when they start doing that. It feels like a different world and capacity, like starting over in another challenge. A heightened challenge.

I have a motto: it's never too late to give up. It's never too late to give up what you are doing, and start doing what you realise you love.

I uprooted my life from Australia and came over to America with the idea of pursuing my acting career. I wasn't really sure where I would end up. I threw caution to the wind.

And in fact the only way I can deal with this eerie situation at all is to make a conscious decision that I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live - and everything from now on will be A New Life, a different thing, a gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning.

To a frog that's never left his pond, the ocean seems like a gamble. Look what he's giving up: security, mastery of his world, recognition! The ocean frog just shakes his head. "I can't explain where I live, but someday I'll take you there."

To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

The first day of shooting, you always want to turn around and go home and say, "What was I thinking?!," and put your head under a pillow and weep. I could maybe go five weeks, and then the nerves would set in about when the next job was going to happen.

I wrestle my fears with every big decision I make. Ultimately, maybe all that wrestling does is make you sick of your own thoughts, and so with nothing resolved you just go ahead and have unprotected sex. The moment I became pregnant, everything became out of gait. None of those fears seem relevant in the same way, and that's so like life, that once you do the daring move you're in a totally different landscape. Now it's a new story.

Don't be afraid to take that leap into the unknown.

Getting married is an adventure. Because when you're getting married, you're doing something you don't know anything about. Did you ever think of that?