Martin Chalfie Quotes

I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis.

I went to college because my father thought that I should learn engineering, because he wanted to go into the heating business with me. There, I realized I wanted to be a physicist. I had to tell him, which was a somewhat traumatic experience.

As soon as I got my proper first job, I never did acting again. I think the last thing I did was a Mike Figures film, and then I got a series with the BBC. I'm glad of the experience, because I think it's very, very good to understand what actors go through.

I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it.

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.

I'm not great at judging a career. Or planning one.

There were various turning points, but the main one at the beginning was that I was going off to do another degree in the history of art. I would have ended up as some art historian at Sotheby's or something.

After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad's an English professor. After a year there, I was like, 'Jesus. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in the library.' So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it.

Being working class, my parents thought, 'Ian's going to uni, the first in the family,' and I'd do dentistry or accountancy. I was going to do accountancy; then I got a C in Economics and thought, 'Why am I doing this?' The only thing I was interested in was books and literature.

Senior year in college, a kind of confluence of events came together to have me pursue a career in acting. I was planning on being a lawyer; I double majored in history and political science. I took the LSAT and did horribly on it, and that was one thing that made me rethink a new direction.

Personally, I have nothing to fall back on, and that creates a weird ambition that you have to be good at acting because you can't be good at anything else. I wish I had gone for my degree - that acting wasn't this be-all-and-end-all.

Nick Kyrgios, if you don't want to be a professional tennis player, do something else.

When my father finished his Ph.D., my mother went back for another bachelor's degree, this time in environmental science.

I got a sociology degree and then had an opportunity to go to graduate school. But I said no, because I wanted to give songwriting a shot.

When I hit 50, I want to go be a professor.

My career, it's been a mess.

Had acting not taken off, I would've been glad to become a teacher.

I'm not going to sit here and go to college for something that I don't care about.

Nurses don't get paid very much. It didn't take long to realize that I could make more as a writer. I loved nursing, but I loved writing more.

I don't really pursue acting. I jokingly say that I retired right at the same time people stopped hiring me, but I really don't think I'm very good at it, and I'm not really interested in it anymore as an adult.

Most people don't go back to trial work after being in management, but I couldn't do anything else.

I was more interested in journalism and fact-finding than other things, so I didn't plan to work 30 years as a lawyer.

As for me, I want to have fun while I'm working. Now not everyone thinks physics is fun, but I do. I think experimental physics is especially fun, because not only do you get to solve puzzles about the universe or on Earth, there are really cool toys in the lab.

After Class 10, I kept away from films.

I couldn't really justify playing for money, and I think what I wanted to achieve put me at too great a risk, so I just decided on another profession.