Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

I'm not a big believer in linear paths. I would always have these sort of five-year plans and think, 'Ok, I wouldn't mind to try to get here in five years.'

No one ever thinks about what the hell is going to happen 25 years from now.

Americans are so direct. They'd ask me, 'What's your five-year plan? Do you have a five-year plan?' I don't know what I'm having for my tea tonight let alone a five-year plan.

I want to do some skating and then go to law school in three years. I'm enjoying it and I'm going to see where it takes me.

When we go out to the university, the professors always say, 'Tell these students about your five-year plan and your 10-year plan,' and I say, 'Gee, we're lucky if we have a year plan.'

I'm so jealous of people who in second grade knew what they wanted to do.

In any case, I am not a great one to make plans for the future.

I'd like to direct at some point. But I don't know because 10 years ago I would have never imagined that I'd be here. So in 10 years from now, I might be running a rodeo.

I don't think, as a 15-year-old, you're that conscious about a lifetime career. I didn't think: "I'm a serious actor." I never studied acting or anything when I was that age.

If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?

My career is going to be played out year by year. Will I be here in 2004? I don't know. The record won't keep me here. Happiness will.

I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there.

Life is amazingly unpredictable; any 22-year-old who thinks they know where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination.

I like to think I have a good few years left of my career yet, as long as I stay fit and healthy. However, it's always good to have a backup plan, which is why I have been working hard to build my business portfolio outside tennis.

If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

A lot of people do things out of fear. A lot of people make choices, based on thinking, they won’t have a career in five years. I know where I am, I know what I do is worth something and does not have an expiration date on it. I’m not making choices — in any capacity of my life, with any kind of endorsement, with any kind of product — out of fear.

I'm working hard to see whether there can be basketball next year.

I think a lot of women, especially ones that want to achieve career goals, tend to worry. I don't want anyone to worry their life away.

I thought long and hard about my future this past year and during the offseason, and I've decided 2015 will be the last time I compete for a championship.

I'm amazed when I think about students today. They know from day one what they are going to be. We didn't. We just coasted. We just knew that things would work out.

Donald Rumsfeld also lost his gig last week. When asked what his future plans are, Rumsfeld said, 'What's a plan?'

I feel like I have no real solid plans like, "this is what I'm going to do and I will do it by 2017" or whatever.

I had thought that I would stop in 2017, but my coach has told me to stop saying that as I may continue into 2018. I'm not thinking about it at the moment.

What hasty preparations we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things we're sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope we'll use, and too light of what we must. We thus go forth misladen, ill equipped for the dawn.

My idea of that[idea of career] is constantly changing. I mostly just throw it out to the universe and I can't really do much after that. I've never taken the steps to be "successful": I've never had a manager or signed to a publishing house. I've talked to people about it but I've never followed through because it gives me the creeps.