David Harbour Quotes

You're constantly getting rejected in acting. You get rejected more than you get hired!

I had given up on acting because I would go for auditions every day, but nothing would happen.

My first audition was for a commercial for the lottery. I didn't get it, so I hate the lottery.

I got rejected from journalism school!

I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

I was 19 years old, pumping gas and going nowhere. I was kind of a high school dropout at that point because I had left school to play hockey, but no one drafted me.

After hundreds of auditions and nothing, you're sitting home and wondering, 'What am I doing?'

I'm disappointed about how my career ended.

I trained myself to not get my hopes up, because there were so many times in the room where you'd be like, 'This feels amazing, this is a hit!' And it never saw the light of day.

After so many years of rejection, I felt acting would have to become a hobby rather than a full-time profession.

It was not even that long ago when my acting career was in the gutter. I was just thinking that I didn't want to live a life still going on auditions and not getting work. I wasn't inspired or anything at the time, and it sucked.

You get so close, a lot of close calls, and then it just doesn't happen. That's just the way the industry is. It's very difficult.

It is hard when you think you can do better, but things just aren't working out.

I go to Milwaukee, I get cut, that really put a funk in me. I'm like, 'Man, it's over for me. I can't even make it in training camp now?'

Things don't always work out as you want them to.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

If you work so hard to reach your goal but you lose your pole in the very last run, that's hard to take.

I feel, in the end, as if everything I've done has been a failure.

Expectation is the mother of all frustration.

I auditioned for 'American Idol' at 17. They told me, 'No.'

So many times, I have a speech ready but no dice. Always a bridesmaid, never a mother.

You play a couple of shows, and these label guys come - and they leave halfway through a show. Then the phone calls just stop. And your heart is broken.

I just did one movie and there was no career for me, anyway.

In L.A., you constantly go on auditions, and you're usually not what they're looking for - you get used to going back and back to the same show, and nothing happens.

I love my job and I know I am very lucky but still, if you audition and you don't get it, it still affects you.