David Lowery Quotes

I didn't have the equipment for the regular world of being a lawyer. I didn't have the imagination for that. I did have a funny kind of ambition, but I didn't know where to put it.

Sometimes we have to take on jobs that we don't love, and I always encourage any creative person to use those as the fuel to do the things that you do love to do, even if they don't pay.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a portrait painter. As I got to be older, I realized that as a portrait painter I wouldn't be able to support a goldfish.

I want more job. I want to die entertaining.

Imagine if I'd said, 'I have to be the best actress - I want that and nothing else.' I never would have directed. I never would have produced. I never would have done a beauty line. I would have just worried about getting a job or been frustrated that I wasn't getting the job that I wanted. I was ready to be a businesswoman.

I'd love to do films, but I'd feel bad in my gut if I did anything just for the money. I want to wait for something I'm really passionate about, even if I don't work for a year.

Oh, I must be ambitious, mustn't I? I'm sure I always have been. I think you can only get away with pretending you're not for so long. After that, it becomes ridiculous.

I remember sitting on a bench in New York and sobbing and realising that my ambition to be a singer was making me selfish - I was a mother with two children, and I needed a backup plan.

You just take any job you can that will allow your dream to come true.

I always feel like 'as long as I'm doin' what I love to do, the money's naturally gonna come.' When you start thinkin' business and you start thinkin' 'What's hot? What's the wave? Who is hot? Let's get at that person,' it becomes a point where you're tryin' to strategize to make money. And that's always a gamble.

I'm not really sure where it comes from, but every time I meet someone who says 'I really want to be an entrepreneur' but has no idea what they want to do, I really just think: 'This person is totally aimless.'

You have to have a certain single-mindedness if you want to reach the top of the profession, and I'm not sure if I've got that cold-eyed egomania that perhaps is needed to get to the top. So as long as I can keep paying the mortgage and keep myself interested, I'll be happy.

After a while, you want to sell a lot of records, win awards and touch as many people as you can, but you have to secure the foundation with your family. I'm a family man, but I'm a businessman, too.

I made a decision that whether or not I was going to make under the national poverty level wasn't going to play a part in whether or not I was an actor. That's what I do.

I work because I want to work. Work keeps me going.

My career has been very strange. My career is like a heart monitor. I get involved in a good project now and then to keep things going. And then I make things that I work on that I hope are going to be good so I can make a living and keep a roof over the heads of those little monsters I have in my house.

The best piece of advice I ever got from anyone was when Spike Jonze said, 'Take money out of the equation.' And that's actually when Vice started making lots of money. That's when I stopped worrying about money and started worrying about what I wanted to do.

I feel very lucky that I make a living doing what I always wanted to do.

I'm very driven, and I always have been. So I'd like to release a successful album, continue in musical theatre, and be more involved in business.

As a high-school drop-out, I knew I wanted to write, but I wasn't overly confident that I was going to be writing anything serious. I was happy enough with the idea that I could be a penny-a-word guy and survive.

As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

I think, like a lot of actors and people in the arts who are struggling to get where they want to be, you spend a lot of time sitting around grumbling about how you're not doing the kind of work you really want to do. But there's a lot of complacency in that, too.

I've always done what I thought was good if I could live on what they were offering-and sometimes if I couldn't. So even when I was broke, my career didn't lack for interest.

I've been accused of being unambitious, but what I do takes up every minute. I'm executive producer, I'm a writer and the host.

When it comes to this business and becoming a comedy superstar, I've never really thought about things holding me back. I think about what to do to go the next place. Comedy now isn't the only thing for me.