Matt Nagy Quotes

My dad, who had spent his life as a lecturer, said, 'That's all very well, but you need to earn a living, so why don't you teach?' I did, and 13 years later, I woke up.

I wish I had stayed and finished my career here in New York.

I've worked for a long time, but I got to the point where I felt like, I am out here so far, how do I get back? I want to have a real life, a personal life. I didn't want a personal life I just visited.

Once I accomplish one thing and I'm satisfied, I try something else. I may be 50 and doing something totally outside of music and acting. Maybe I'll become a kindergarten teacher.

I studied business in school, so I worked for Chanel in marketing. And I also worked part-time in an office. So I had office jobs. And then I realized I needed to get the hell out of there, just realizing there was no fulfillment.

After Class 10, I kept away from films.

I wanted to be a teacher because that is all I knew. It was a great course on primary school education, in which I could specialise in music, but I ended up dropping out after I was honest with myself about what I really wanted to do with my life.

When I came back to Hong Kong in 1992, I decided to pursue a new career challenge.

People like to cherry-pick the parts of their career that they're either in the midst of or that they're the most proud of, but the truth is careers and lives are tapestries.

But I was going to be a teacher my entire life, so I wasn't counting on money to much.

I don't think one should ever come to my stage of life and have to look back and say, Gosh. I wish I hadn't spent all those years doing that job I was never really interested in.

I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.

I did a law degree but was miserable the whole time. I was supposed to join a law firm in London but instead went to Oxford to do a master's in philosophy.

Dad worked his entire career as an aviation technician. Mom was a legal secretary who became a teacher. We lived a simple American life.

I was working at a phone company. I got tired of my life and wanted to change it, so I did.

It never occurred to me that I wouldn't go to college and have a career - as well as a family - of my own. Both my parents, but especially my mother, encouraged me and led me to believe that it was possible.

It was easy for me to leave acting for school, because I wasn't really in it as an adolescent for fulfilling reasons.

Growing up, I was encouraged to get a good education, get a real job doing something I enjoyed, and, should the opportunity present itself, consider public service as just that: a chance to serve, not an end in itself.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

My parents wanted me to be a teacher. Because I could work most of the year and pursue the things that I love to do during the summer. It just seemed like a good plan.

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.

My major was Fine Arts and Education thinking I would become an Art Teacher. I couldn't visualize myself as an art teacher, thinking how it wouldn't work.

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 lost my passion for work. No, that's a negative statement. I just had a bigger passion for something else, for my son, and growing up with him.