Kay Cannon Quotes

I tell people that the best thing that can ever happen to you is getting fired, and you can either sink or swim, and I swam like hell. The reason why I swam the way I swam was because there was nothing else for me.

I had my years of struggling. Some of my shows failed miserably, and I was upset by it and it dented my confidence. But I never stopped. I kept going for it.

I didn't have big movie offers, or any big agents wanting to work with me. I had to go grassroots, start at the bottom and go on 150 auditions before someone finally gave me a shot.

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.

When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly, everything feels easier.

I've been the teenage success, I've been homeless and driving around in my car and not knowing where to eat. You just want to keep working and learning, and I was doing that. If I hadn't done 'Wild Bill,' I'm sure I would have acted in something else.

I experienced firsthand what it means to be poor, what it means to go hungry, and that, I think, may be the reason, the root cause of why I'm able to work so hard, even these days.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

My advice: Don't quit. When I got to New York City, I lived so far below the poverty line, because I didn't give in and get a job at 7-Eleven. I think you can thrive in misery.

When I started out, I struggled, and I was broke a lot. But I'm glad I struggled, and I'm glad I was broke a lot.

When my trust fund ran out, I panicked. I have a lot of admiration for the kids who come to the big city with nothing and make it.

I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.

God bless my mother - she's long gone now, but she'd work all day and go to school at night. She started out in life as a housekeeper at 15 years old, totally on her own, and she retired as a college professor. But there were some hard times. It's not easy for a woman who's only trying to do the best for her kid but who could never be home.

I had my years of struggling. Some of my shows failed miserably, and I was upset by it, and it dented my confidence. But I never stopped. I kept going for it. And when I returned to New York from Los Angeles, I mean, it was make it or not - that was my last chance. And what a great chance it was, to make it in my own hometown.

Either you give in, or you fight. That's all I know, being where I'm from. You fight for what you want. You go after what you want. The only thing I could do was give up or keep fighting for what I wanted in life.

I lived below the poverty line when I was young and starting out as a writer. But my wife and I kept trying to do things better, as anyone with ambition does. But just because you're trying doesn't mean you're always going to succeed.

I train like I never had nothing 'cause I ain't never had nothing.

Back at the beginning of my career, I had to make all these sacrifices - sleeping in a car on nights where I'd wrestle in front of 20,000 people - because I wasn't making any money.

The early days were really difficult because it was constant no's, I didn't have an agent. I always knew that I had something to offer, but it just felt like I could never get someone to give me a chance.

The American Dream - I believe in that cliche because I know what having nothing feels like.

I don't want no handouts. I want to get it out the mud.

When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again.

I learned at a very early age that life is a battle. My family was poor, my neighborhood was poor. The only way that I could get away from the awfulness of life, at that time, was at the movies. There I decided that my big aim was to make money. And it was there that I became a very determined woman.

I've experienced poverty and plenty, and there's a lesson to be learned when you're brought up in poverty.