Raymond Burr Quotes

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things.

It is kind of hard to figure out who you are when you've lost your job at age 13, when that was basically how you identified yourself.

I got my Bachelor's degree in nursing and worked nine years - even taught nursing in a college - before I stopped and said to myself, 'This is not who I am. I am not really a nurse inside. I'm a writer.'

When I was a model, I started with an opinion, but was encouraged to lose it. It began as play-acting, but then I lost sight of myself a bit: so when I did the audition for 'Popworld' and they asked my opinion, I felt like crying with happiness.

I learned more about myself by being an RN than anything else I've ever done.

My biggest fear has always been being 40 and hating my job. I love challenges. I'm not afraid to try anything.

Sometimes you kind of lose yourself in someone else's personality.

I was happy being a journalist. I didn't realize losing my job, my identity went with it.

Sometimes, taking a job is like going to a shrink or something, where you get to know yourself better.

When I wasn't working I didn't know what to do with myself and sort of didn't exist, in a way, when I wasn't working, so I was like two different people. I am not like that anymore.

I had to make some drastic choices to avoid losing myself.

What I did for a living for so many years separated who I was from what I did.

When I started on the 'Burnett' show, I was just out of high school, and when we went off the air, I was 28 years old, married with two kids. At that point I felt I really wanted to be mommy to my children. But I found that after a year and a half, I really missed the part of myself that was an actress.

My first job was at Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, my second job was at a pharmaceutical company in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. My third job was at Palmolive. And I realized, three jobs in three years, maybe it wasn't the job. It had to be me.

I read Leisel Jones' book. She said she retired at 27 and said, 'Now what?' because swimming was the biggest part of her life. So for me, that's why I'm keeping up my studies on the side even if it's going to take a bit longer than normal, but at least I'll have it.

Don't define yourself by your mistakes or by the single thing you are at your work.

I'm still learning more about myself and my situation and really, off the court, how to function there, because I'm kind of getting the taste of retirement now.

I have been a fearless man. I have been a ridiculous man. I finished my engineering and got a job. And then one day, I just quit it. I didn't know what I would do, but I didn't want to be an engineer anymore.

From my point of view, it is better to take the chance, having had nine jobs in 10 years, to recharge my batteries

It was not designed for me to be 35 and still doing the same thing. But in another sense, it's like I've had an extended adolescence. It helps that I look young, too.

She wanted to be alone - to think things out - to adjust herself, if it were possible, to the new world in which she seemed to have been transplanted with a suddenness and completeness that left her half bewildered to her own identity.

Maintain a good balance. A personal life adds dimensions to your professional life and vice versa. It helps nurture creativity through a deeper understanding of yourself.

I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few became qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to one - to who I am. And that's who I am.

My career was about to change radically, in turning 50 I had hit the age where my Dad made a big career and his life started to unravel.

You will be stupid. You will worry your parents. You will question your own choices, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all... If that happens, you're doing it right.