Damaris Phillips Quotes

Medicine and writing are natural companions.

Today it is not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of models of eloquence, but the ad agencies.

One of the things that we hope to do with 'Pitchmen' is to give people an appreciation of what we do.

I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter.

I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books.

I guess my career has gone in a roundabout way.

I didn't have a dream of being a press secretary, I had a dream of being a playwright; I had a dream of being a novelist and a poet.

In college, I majored - I can't believe there is such a thing - in advertising. And I worked in advertising and PR for a while, and I liked it.

I wrote for years before I was ever published, and I don't think I could ever stop. That said, I was also a veterinarian before I sold my first book, and I still volunteer my time to help with animal welfare causes. So that is a career I would be happy to return to - while still secretly writing strange stories back in my doctor's office.

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

When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.

Advertising was only meant to be a very small part of my life. I had intended that I would work extensively in journalism for about five or six years and then I'd become a writer.

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

Words are both my vocation and my avocation - reading, writing, editing, teaching.

I thought I wanted to be a journalist or a novelist.

Marketing is such a key issue; in fact, the marketing department is often involved in the approval of scripts now.

At the end of the 1950s, I started working at a publishing company, Estudios Cor, as production manager, so returning, but not as an author, to the world of letters I had left some years before.

It is extremely unlikely that anyone coming out of school with a technical degree will go into one area and stay there. Today's students have to look forward to the excitement of probably having three or four careers.

I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.

Like most people, I was not able to start selling my stories right away. So I had many other jobs along the way to becoming a writer, including toy maker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, and assembly line worker. Eventually, I became an elementary teacher and worked with second and fourth graders.

My career has evolved at its own peculiar pace. American careers are supposed to have a much more singular direction than I've been able to... stomach.

The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.

I began illustrating children's books because of a growing disillusionment with the sort of work I was doing in the advertising industry. Book publishing offered me the chance to be far more creative.

Then one day I thought it would be wonderful to make a whole book, to make my text and my drawings together, and that's how I started doing children's books.

I've been doing documentaries for about 25 years and want to continue to do that, but I love the idea of working in a different medium. Advertising pushes the envelope creatively, and there is some really great work being done right now, so I'm excited to jump into it.