Ken Howard Quotes

I knew at university that medicine was just not for me. I saved many lives by not being a doctor!

Some people make a career out of doing one thing, but I wanted to diversify my body of work.

I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.

By that time I was hooked on a career in academic research instead of one in the pharmaceutical industry that I had originally considered in deciding to get a PhD.

I wanted to be an academic when I was 19 or 20. But, I've gone off that idea. The lifestyle is kind of lonely and isolated. I don't think that would suit me.

I didn't know at all I wanted to do TV. I thought I might go to law school. I might want to become a history professor.

I was promoted associate professor in early 1970 and full professor in October of the same year. I spent the two spring semesters of 1972 and 1974 as visiting professor at Harvard University, giving lectures and directing a research project.

It always irritated me that people think they have to be locked into a career path.

I didn't want to be an accountant; I found myself being a banker, which was a bit different. I went to university, and I was going to do a Ph.D. in the States, but I didn't get the funding for it, so I had two years where I had a bit of a wobble and didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I ended up working as a banker.

After my health suffered due to the stress of running my second company, I had to switch careers. But I still didn't want to go back to the corporate world. So I became an academic.

You could have two completely different careers if you could stay healthy to 90. How fascinating that would be.

When I started playing, my parents told me to go to university. They just said choose wisely and find something you can combine with training.

I spent many years in college studying English literature. I was on the verge of attending grad school to get a Ph.D. in Renaissance poetry - my lost careers were being a writer, artist, or academic. Do I regret spending all that time poring over Shakespeare when I could have been getting a jump start on the competition? Not at all.

In college, where I graduated with a Fashion Merch & Business & Bachelors of Science Degree, I was bored. I just couldn't work a nine-to-five job.

I have a masters in African-American literature, and I got a Ph.D. in American Literature. I spent a number of years teaching as a professor in the university system. Then I turned forty and decided I was going to be the woman I wanted to be!

I won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn't want to be an academic.

If I was to say "I'll only do movies," then I'd struggle to find a varied career. My priority is an interesting career, that's why I keep a low rent, I don't go on big holidays, and I keep it very simple.

When my father finished his Ph.D., my mother went back for another bachelor's degree, this time in environmental science.

When I hit 50, I want to go be a professor.

I don't think, because I'm going to school for something else, that I will stop being an actress.

Had acting not taken off, I would've been glad to become a teacher.

There's a lot to be said for women who want to focus primarily on acting. Other women, on the other hand, aspire to combine their work in acting with other ventures in fashion, business, directing, writing, producing, etc. It's a very personal decision.

I'm a firm believer that you don't have to pick one career path.

I had always wanted to go to college but found my life taking a different path.

I've gone through a whole series of careers where something started as a hobby of some kind. Almost everything I've been paid to do was something that was largely self-taught.