Joel Grey Quotes

A suggestion had been made to me looking toward a professorship in some Western college, but after due consideration, I declined to consider the matter.

If you were a son of mine, I wouldn't want you to be an architect, because it's a tough way to be in the world.

I wanted to be a mechanic. When I was 14 I wanted to quit school and go work on my car. But my dad said Son, you shouldn't do that. You should stay in school until your education is finished, and when you're done, don't make your hobby your job.

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.

I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.

I had cooked a lot in restaurants, in Rocky Point and on golf courses on Long Island, and my mother said, 'Be a chef,' and my dad said, 'Be a lawyer.' But instead, I auditioned for N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts.

It was a very long and hard decision. My dad kept telling me, 'You can always go to college, but you can't always go pro.' That made sense to me.

They tried to make my dad play professional basketball. But he was married young, too, at 20 years old. He wanted to have a family and said that money was not enough.

Probably the hardest question I get asked is, 'How do I choose between passion and practicality?' I can't answer that. I had to do both. I was passionate about pursuing a career in financial services. But I was also passionate about feeding my child.

My dad was an actor, and he always said that work was work; you can't turn your nose up at it. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, and he had this real work ethic, which I inherited.

I went to college. I did that but I worked at the same time, and I trained.

Well, I love being a head coach. And when my kids were younger, it just didn't feel right at the time. I was happy where I was. I actually got away from football for a couple years until I figured out how much I missed it.

I grew up in a family with three siblings. My parents were always very supportive and encouraging. It was important for them that we have meaningful and satisfying professions, but they didn't care as much about success and achievement.

I prefer doing work that projects me as a woman and a mother.

I am very lucky to have a wife who supports me, but the absence from my children was difficult from the moment I took a very difficult decision to have a career which requires so much dedication and focus, just like raising children.

I don't think young people are prepared for the moment of reckoning at the end of college - if you even go to college - where you have to get off of the hamster wheel and decide, 'Wait, where do I go from here?'

Money is important, but the most important thing for me is to play football, and then I'm happy. OK, you want to earn a good amount of money to be secure, but if I chose money, I would go to Russia and already have a lot more. I like to play football, and that is it.

There's so much fakeness in the fashion world, but Mum and Dad have always given us a good work ethic and were quite worried at first about whether I could make a living from acting. They've been together for 29 years and share the same values. I really do want to have that kind of marriage myself.

I did not want to be an engineer or be in information technology, and my parents were supportive of my decision.

I told my mom for years that I wanted to be a manicurist, and she'd always be like, 'But what if you went to college and you got a degree?' She'd try to explain how I could actually do a thing that would make me a ton of money, or that I didn't have to just pick the business that was closest to our house.

We weren't wealthy but we weren't poor either. My mum was a teacher and my dad, Chris, was an England international cricketer. We were always taught respect when it came to money, and that stands me in good stead now. I've always respected my parents, and still look to them for advice when I need it.

What your character does for a living is one of the most important choices you can make in a screenplay, even if their job is tangential to the story, because it tells you everything about the condition of their life. Are they doing what they love? Are they doing what they hate?

I couldn't make a living as a comic in Ireland and I was watching my friends from college getting good jobs, buying houses, and I had to really take stock and say: am I going to go for this comedy thing, or what?

My approach has always been to work so that I can support my family.

I had to make a decision: am I going to go for the football or make another choice. When you play in the Dutch second division, it's not like you can live off that for your whole life.