Stephen Hillenburg Quotes

I would have been a visual artist. When I was in high school, that was one of the things... I had to make a decision what I was going to go to college for, and at the time, I also painted and sculpted. I got more attention for my performing, so I thought that was a better idea.

I think an education is beneficial, but whether it takes an education to be successful in the arts is a whole other question.

I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life until I graduated high school.

I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.

Scientists are always the ones who head into the ocean, but I want to take writers and politicians, people who can convey the beauty that is there and perhaps do something to take care of it.

Santa Cruz is blessed not only with natural wonders, but also with gifted souls who can fashion nature's bounty into man-made treasures.

I'd always loved writing, in the same way that I'd loved painting. I wouldn't have seen it as a career.

My parents always knew that I loved music. They just didn't think I'd try to make it a career. They thought I'd be a painter or an art teacher or something like that.

As I get older, I realize all I've done is sing and act and hone those skills.

My background is inseparable from my work.

We've only explored about five percent of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there, fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways that we can't even yet imagine.

I was singing before I acted, but I was also attracted to drama, and, y'know, I got successful at that, which isn't a bad thing.

I am delighted to see that the issue of coral reefs is receiving the attention it deserves.

I just kind of figured that the marine biology would be a career, and the art would be something I did for my own self-expression.

I can speak to my experience and say that CalArts worked out very well for me. After CalArts, I went to Cartoon Network, and then came to Disney.

I have become an employee of art.

I wanted to be a car pinstriper, but there was nobody to teach me how to do it. So I said, 'Music's good too. I'll do that maybe, since I can't work out how to do this pinstriping.'

You know how certain actors find their niches? Eventually, I'll be there as well. I just haven't found that yet. I'm just enjoying the ride.

Originally, I thought of being a photographer and nearly went to art school, but I got a record deal instead.

I had wanted to be a sculptor throughout life, but to do so, I had to stop painting.

I suppose the marine biology was a post-teen thing. I was kind of on my way but I was one of those teenage boys who got to 13, 14 and had no idea what I was going to do. I liked natural history. I liked the outdoors. And I found the sea quite interesting.

When I was writing songs or performing or producing or dabbling in movies or even putting my career on hold to go to art school, I was just following my muse. A woman who did that then was criticized for having no direction. Today they call it versatility.

I never really considered film as a career, but I knew I didn't want to be a builder. So I went to art college, and it just gradually happened.

I wasn't creative or theatrical. I was just doing everything. I was head cheerleader, valedictorian - it was ridiculous!

n artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty.