Ryan Higa Quotes

I wanted to be an academic when I was 19 or 20. But, I've gone off that idea. The lifestyle is kind of lonely and isolated. I don't think that would suit me.

I went to engineering school, which I thought was what I wanted to do, for about two weeks. We had an orientation class and we met this guy where he worked and stuff and it was cool, but I was like, 'There is no way this is going to be my life.'

I thought I wanted to be a brain surgeon until I realized all the schooling it required. I didn't like school very much so I had to come up with something else.

I knew at university that medicine was just not for me. I saved many lives by not being a doctor!

I wanted to be a landscape architect, but I trained as a teacher; I worked in publishing; I was a waitress.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

Sometimes I think it'd be fun to do a completely different job for a while. You've got one life and you do the same job for the whole of it, and you think - was that a good use of a life?

In 10 years, I don't really know what I'll be, and I like not having any idea. I like the idea of being so passionate about everything I do and the fact that I might wake up tomorrow and say 'I want to be a chef,' and just pour myself into that.

Well I could have been just a writer. I had been a hair dresser. I could have stuck with that.

I think, ultimately, looking back now, acting wasn't satisfying me 100%.

I still think I'm going to do something else when I grow up.

People don't really know themselves until they're 30. Like most people nowadays, I went to university, got a degree and wandered for a bit. I trained to be a chartered accountant, which I didn't much enjoy, and it was only slowly that the idea of becoming a creative writer gelled.

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

And I discovered after a couple years that I really didn't miss making movies.

After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.

I gave up the idea of having a career when I was 24. Sounds glamorous, but I've been doing things since then, and part of those adventures was to make films because I realised I was actually quite good at it and I enjoyed it.

I didn't want to be an accountant; I found myself being a banker, which was a bit different. I went to university, and I was going to do a Ph.D. in the States, but I didn't get the funding for it, so I had two years where I had a bit of a wobble and didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I ended up working as a banker.

I didn't plan to be a director until I was 35. For years I wanted to do anything but!

I had a very good friend who was two years older than I was, and she was in law school, and she said, 'It's a great thing to do when you have no idea what you want to do.' And she was right. I learned a lot, I practiced law for 10 years. I've never looked back once I stopped practicing law, but it was a really good experience.

I didn't intend to be an actress. It was one of many things I was interested in, and it just took off. I was an actress between the ages of 18 and 22, and it was a wonderful, fun thing to do, but it wasn't what I intended long term. I parked acting a long time ago.

At one point, I quit acting for a little bit to study psycholinguistics - somewhat a more practical career. It just didn't feel right.

I did some good stuff over in the U.K., but I wasn't consistently working. For a while there, I was going, 'Do I really want to do this - should I go back to university?'

I don't see myself acting for the rest of my life.

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.

When I talk to students - and I still think of myself more than anything as a kind of professor on leave - they say, 'Well, how do I get to do what you do?'... And I say, 'Well, you have to start out by being a failed piano major.' And my point to them is don't try to have a 10-year plan. Find the next thing that interests you and follow that.