John Otway Quotes

My parents were ambitious people, my father especially, whose entire life was devoted to rising above, but his ambitions were defeated long before death finished them off, and so when he died, he came back to where he started, but he didn't come back home, because there was no home to come back to.

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

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.

When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either.

I wish I had had a great disappointment, a real one.

I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen.

Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be - and that we're ordinary.

My sister wanted to be an actress, but she never made it. She does live in a trailer. She got halfway. She's an actress, she just never gets called to the set.

At 30 I thought my life was over. I thought I'd have made something of myself by then, that life would somehow have made the necessary arrangements - but actually I had nothing.

Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.

Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was.

My biggest loss was the Olympics. I just can't forget losing. I never will.

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

People saying, 'Life didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.' Welcome to the club. I wanted to be the starting center-fielder for the Boston Red Sox, for chrissakes!

On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died.

I intended to be famous by the time I was 16 and rich by the time I was 20. Curiously, it didn't pan out!

I had some great high points and thought: 'This is fantastic. I'm going to be a huge star.' Then something happens, and you can't get a job to save your life.

You never get every job you want.

I do wish I'd had a better career. Who wouldn't?

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.

When I was eight, an uncle, great uncle, gave a violin to me, and my father took me off to have lessons. After about six weeks, the violin teacher told my father he was wasting his money, wasting his time, and wasting my time, and it's one of my big regrets.

You never forget the feeling of not getting to the World Series. Yes, it sticks with you.

I wanted so badly to be in a famous band, and it was not happening. I played drums with different bands and with the Blue Man Group in Chicago, but I definitely felt like, 'Wow, I did not picture my life being like this.'

The memories for the missed opportunities are stronger than for the ones I managed to get over the line in.