Louis Gossett Jr. Quotes

I never wanted to be an actor as a kid. I wanted to play hockey, like every other kid in Canada. I had a pretty good shot at it until I was 15 and badly injured myself.

At nineteen I was pretty sure I was going to be a professional soccer player. At that time I played for one of the Norwegian premier leagues. But I tore ligaments in both knees, so I started studying business administration and economics and became a financial analyst, and I worked at a brokerage firm as a stockbroker.

By the time I entered high school, I had forsaken academics altogether in favor of my burgeoning acting career.

I started out with the intention of studying physics. I was a terrible high school student outside of the fact that I did well in physics, but there's a big difference between being good at physics and being a physicist, so I jettisoned that very quickly.

I was nerdy and really into computers. I was a good student until my senior year, when I started traveling and had a lot of absences.

I sort of tried to get a basketball scholarship out of high school, but that didn't happen. Then I started working for UPS, and that paid for tuition for school. I moved to a bigger town, Louisville. I did it for a year. I had to work the graveyard shift. And then you get off at eight for classes, so that sucked. Then I dropped out.

Am I ever going to be able to play football again? What's going on with my career? I was just thinking things like that. You've got tears going down your eyes. You've got your trainers right there and my parents right there. I was just thinking, "Is this it?" I didn't know what a knee injury was. I'd never felt pain like that.

I was 16 and did a play at school. I was a rather good student... And then I did a play when I was 16 and completely lost all my concentration for academics.

I got injured when I was a kid, and it prevented me from becoming a footballer.

I injured myself quite badly when I was seventeen. I broke my ankle, and it didn't heal in such a way that I could keep dancing at the level I wanted to. It wasn't like, 'Oh my god, I'll never play the violin again.' I could, but not at the level I wanted. So, I segued into acting, the other thing that was also meaningful to me.

At the time I retired I was kind of known for it, as one of the guys whose career ended technically as a result of a big hit.

When I moved to L.A. and joined East West Players, I started acting professionally.

I was really good in high school, so in college I was going to be really bad.

I grew up in Arkansas and that's the law. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so I was raised as a coach's son and I was a baseball player back in Arkansas, and I lived in Texas, too, so I was just surrounded by sports. So that's what I was going to do: Pitch for the St Louis Cardinals. I had no idea I was going to be an actor. So I got my collar bone broken in the Kansas City Royals training camp. And once I got hurt I started doing other things for a while.

The Chinese tell time by 'The Year of the Horse' or 'The Year of the Dragon.' I tell time by 'The Year of the Back' and 'The Year of the Elbow.' This year it's 'The Year of the Ulnar Nerve.' Someone once asked me if I had any physical incapacities of my own. 'Sure I do,' I said. 'One big one - Jim Palmer.'

He's (Bruce Sutter) going to be out of action the rest of his career.

I got in drama class in high school and I only got in there because there were girls and I thought maybe I could make a grade above a C in something.

A lot of the best acting training I had was in junior high and high school. We had very demanding directors and did real plays. You put our plays up against any theater troupe of any age, and they usually did pretty damn well.

My grades in high school were not very good. I was that kind of perfectionist that figured if you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all?

I was hopeless at high school - I failed everything but Latin.

That's always a concern with a player when he's injured. There's a difference between injured and pain. If a guy's injured, he's injured. Pain is pain. Guys can play with pain. Guys can't play when they're injured.

It all started when I got injured early in my second season. This turned out to be as difficult emotionally as physically.

I don't know if I ever would have developed into a good actor, but that got completely scotched when I lost my vocal cord at 14 in the operation. But writing always - writing plays, writing, writing, writing, that was what I wanted to do.

You get depressed because you're like, 'Everybody's working and I'm here sitting.' I feel for all gymnasts who get hurt. Injuries are just awful, but at least I had 'Bones' to work on when I wasn't training. It got my mind off the fact that I couldn't do anything.

I wanted to be a doctor once upon a time, but it turns out you've got to study, and that wasn't going to happen. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had trouble holding jobs because they want you to be on time. That wasn't going to work.