A. N. Wilson Quotes

I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.

As an instructor at Alexandria University, I did research that was published in international journals. Although I left to pursue a doctorate in the United States, it was not for want of a good life.

I came from a traditional immigrant family where education meant there were only a few valid paths: doctor or lawyer - and I didn't want to be either one.

For me, university was just awful because it was closing one door after the other of all these candy shops of professional possibilities.

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don't love it; I just like it.

It always irritated me that people think they have to be locked into a career path.

If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.

People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.

I am a professor at Stanford; I am a happy professor at Stanford. That's where I'm staying.

In 1970, Dean Robert Ebert offered me the Chair of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. I moved to Harvard because I missed the university environment and, more particularly, the stimulating interaction with the eager, enthusiastic, and unprejudiced young minds of the students and fellows.

I was graduated in 1940 with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Social Science but a major in Mathematics, a paradoxical combination that was prognostic of my future interests.

What about the rat race in the first place? Is it worthwhile? Or are you just buying into someone else's definition of success? Only you can decide that, and you'll have to decide it over and over and over. But if you think it's a rat race, before you drop out, take a deep breath. Maybe you picked the wrong job. Try again. And then try again.

When I don't have a movie, I don't take a job just for the sake of working. I just sit it out until I find something I'm passionate about.

In the India I was growing up in, history wasn't really a wise career option. People would joke and say, 'History's okay, but what's your actual job?' I didn't come from a privileged background and couldn't afford to be irresponsible, so I did the pragmatic thing and did a MBA.

I'm either offered window-dressing parts in large movies or little art films no one ever sees. People think the movies I end up doing are my real choices. I do the best things I'm offered.

My father said that I could always become an actress, but I couldn't go back to college later in life. So I had to first finish my education, and then I could do what I wanted. At the time, I was not pleased, but now, I can't thank him enough. My parents were absolutely right.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.

I actually went to study journalism at Northwestern, thinking that would be my Plan B for a career. But then I realized, if I'm going to struggle and make no money, I might as well do what I really want to do.

Earned a bachelor's at 27, then an M.F.A. that is still completely unused and in mint condition, never taken out of the box.

I had parents who believed I could do anything - and I know how that made me feel. I think both my parents, having careers in the medical profession, feel they are helping people on a daily basis, and that was inculcated in me as a value. I had to struggle with giving up the idea of becoming a doctor myself.

I know I've got a degree. Why does that mean I have to spend my life with intellectuals? I've got a lifesaving certificate but I don't spend my evenings diving for a rubber brick with my pyjamas on.

I don't think my parents would have let me go straight into acting full time when I was 12. I do like to have balance, naturally, as an individual.

I don't want to be forty-five and still a freshman.

It will soon be 25 years from the date of publication of my first research work. That the scientific aspirations kindled by that early work did not suffer extinction has been due entirely to the opportunities provided for me by the great city of Calcutta.

I came of age when jobs were plentiful and college not exorbitantly expensive. I graduated with debt, but it was manageable, and I set off to do something I loved - journalism.