John Wayne Quotes

I thought 'The Well' was going to launch my career, but nothing happened.

'The bigtime for you is just around the corner.' They told me that first in 1952 - boy, it's been a long corner. If I don't hit the bigtime in the next 25 or 30 years, I'm gonna pack in the music business and become a full-time gigolo.

I had been on several shows that were meant to be the big ones, that would go on forever, and they didn't.

You were always told that if you worked hard, you would get somewhere. But so many people feel they have worked hard and they have nothing to show for it.

You want good ratings, you want people to like the show, you want to be appreciated for the hard work you put in. You don't always get it. Every show is not beloved.

I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

I had amazing stuff happen right off the top. I thought this was how it worked. Hollywood is awesome! Cut to three years later: What happened?

How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.

I had arrived years ago in Paris and just wanted to be famous, fast. When you're pretentious like that, and you think you've planned everything perfectly, it's then that everything goes in the opposite way.

There are plenty of people in the world who have tried to be rock stars and have not gotten there.

It took years, honestly, to deal with the disappointment of Beijing.

I've never been a guy who had more than a toe in Hollywood anyway, so my toe is more easily lopped off than most.

I'd been told I was going to be the next big thing. But in actual fact, the complete opposite happened.

Fame was not at all what it was cracked up to be, as far as I was concerned.

Sometimes your dreams come true, and it's a real drag.

It was total naivety that got me to Hollywood. I thought it was going to happen straight away. I told myself 'give it 5 years, there's no way I'll be here after that if it doesn't happen'. Cut to ten years later!

I reappointed him and he disappointed me.

'Gimme a Break' ran for six years and gave me the kind of money and freedom that I'd dreamed would make me happy. It didn't.

I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be a superstar. I wanted to be on stage. I wanted to perform. I wanted to be in movies. But as you grow up, those dreams kind of fade away, and you're hit with reality, and you're like, 'Oh, not everyone can be Lil' Bow Wow?' Fine.

When I finally got there, to where I thought was the top, I wasn't doing what I was doing in the beginning. I was not happy.

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.

My first film was a big dud at the box office, and my second film did decently. I used to wonder how it would feel to have a hit film. I thought I'd be larger than life, but I'm not feeling anything I imagined. It's a completely different experience.

Nothing is worse than having your dreams come true.

I think the moment you're convinced something's going to be good is the moment that it's not going to be.