Neil Patrick Harris Quotes

I want to be able to manipulate and control my career from the creative side.

People from my father's generation didn't have the luxury to be unhappy in their job.

I've always been an independent producer. I'd kind of like to be hired help for a change. I don't mind that.

If you don't have the good fortune to work a lot then you take any job you get offered, whether it's a good job, fun job, a bad job, horrible job, whatever, you just take what you need to take. But I'm lucky in that - at the moment anyway and hopefully forever, but who knows - I get the chance to pick jobs for the kick of it and the fun.

I don't work at something because I think it's important. I work at things that, to me, are interesting.

It would have shown people that I was prepared to do that kind of work, although I find myself in a position now where I don't really need to and I could pick and choose the kind of characters I'd like to do.

I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.

I've finally reached a stage in my career where I can do what I want.

What career? A man's got a body of film of about four movies in about 10 years or something. I do it because I think I can do a good job of something and I'll enjoy it, do it, and sort of vanish. I don't want to be an actor for hire.

I wanted to build up a little nest egg and go back to L.A. and choose roles that I wanted to do instead of roles that I had to do to pay the bills.

It really was total heaven to be a writer. As a model or actor you are employed on someone's whim. As a writer, you are in control.

My job description? It is many things; it is a whole universe created around the things that I like.

One is a painter because one wants so-called freedom; one doesn't want to go to the office every morning.

That I would rather be in another business where a bad cold wouldn't put me out of work.

Writing, and its theatre of operation, is better than working shifts packing frozen sausages; that's all I need to think about if I'm having difficulties.

Every job is a blessing. Everyone has to take into account what is available. Are you paying rent, who do you get to work with? There are a lot of variables in the job. What I'm drawn to is things that I don't completely understand maybe, and want to get a better feel for it.

Life is just a set of experiences. As long as there are new experiences for me in a corporate job, I don't think I have to be an entrepreneur.

I have been able to play a lot of guys and they have kept me working.

I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer, which I turned out to be. But I was always curious about other things too, and what if I got interested in history or the law?

I get to do interesting roles and make a living.

I knew I'd have to go to work in real estate or something else or I could never finish my novel.

I read a quote by James Dean when I was 17; he said, 'I'd rather starve than do a whole bunch of work that I don't care about.' The older I got, the more I understood what he was saying. If I want to do a whole lot of work that I don't care about, then I would probably be working in a law office somewhere.

I was a commercial roofer before this, until about age thirty. I will not work others under me and do not want to work under others.

My agents do not like my choice to work only in New York and Israel - it's not a good career move.

Writing is self employment, so you can make your own schedule.