Matthew Quick Quotes

There came a point when I was thinking, 'I'm now 26, 27, working on music every day, but I'm not making, like, a lot of money. What's happening? I guess I'll just start making dog clothes.'

My TV show had been cancelled; nothing else had gone anywhere; some alliances I had made petered out and nothing came of them and I was looking at a long, long year ahead of me in which there was no work on the horizon, the phone wasn't ringing. I had two kids, one of them a brand-new baby, and I didn't know if I would be able to keep my house.

I was happy being a journalist. I didn't realize losing my job, my identity went with it.

Poor Darrell Hammond. What's he going to do when I leave office?

Before 'Homeland,' I had £80 in the bank and no idea what I was going to do. I seriously considered giving it all up and getting a job as a lorry driver.

I was almost ready to call it quits - sick of doing a job and then being back on the unemployment line and trying to make ends meet. But I loved acting and didn't know what else to do.

When you start out in the industry and things are tough, and you're not really making money, you question yourself: should I give up?

My mother was an English teacher who decided to become a math teacher, and she used me as a guinea pig at home. My father had been a math teacher and then went to work at a steel mill because, frankly, he could make more money doing that.

In 1996, after 29 years as an artist for Marvel Comics, I got fired - 56 years old, two children still in college, and no job.

I just remember all those days in the unemployment line, stressed out over when my next job was coming.

I love that my dad has stopped asking me when I'm going to get a real job.

I planned on being an English teacher, but I don't know where that went.

Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

My mother and my father were teachers. My grandmother and my grandfather were teachers. This is something I really know about. Even when I was a kid, it was a profession my father couldn't stay in, because he couldn't make enough money.

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

I didn't want to be the archetypal sponging brother-in-law, so I didn't go into acting when I got to the States. I thought, 'No, I'll go to school and then I'll be an English teacher; that'll be fun.' But I was horrible as a teacher. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't inspire those kids to take an interest in Milton and Shakespeare and Donne.

I did plenty of jobs that I hated. I was a bank teller and terrible at it. I parked cars, a valet. I answered phones. I somehow avoided being a waiter. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the order straight. I'm not much of a multi-tasker.

I had a period of unemployment for about nine months after my first big break, and it's the greatest lesson I ever could have learned, never to believe you're home and dry.

There's so little money in my bank account, my scenic checks show a ghetto.

When I left 'Days of Our Lives,' I was like, 'I don't know if I'm ever working again. I'm going to do the best I can. If it happens, great. If not, well... it sucks for me.'

Well, I've thought many times when my career was in the toilet, that I was going to have to seriously consider getting another job, I don't know what I'd do.

After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley.

I've been out of work so many times in my life that relying too much on just one job is terrifying.

I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn't get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don't even want.