Stephen Hillenburg Quotes

I got alright GCSEs, but I was lost. I didn't know what to do, whether to continue with education, go to uni, go to art school - then again, I was like, 'Maybe I should just go and get a job, start early and make money.'

I decided to stay in art and earn some money.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm not working at McDonald's and how come I have the life I have. I don't know. But I'm happy that I have these choices. That's kinda sappy, huh? But whatever, acting beats pumping gas.

There may be the kinds of things that you may find interesting, but then there's also the practical reality of needing to make a living and this is what you have to choose from.

Put you energy into music. If it fails you, you can become an accountant or a dentist. And then if you become a dentist or an accountant, it's too late to become a musician afterwards.

It's the typical mid-life crisis kind of thing, where you just stop and wonder, 'Should I go back to university and get a law degree?' I kind of looked around me and thought, 'What kind of idiot am I that I've just spent the last 10 years writing novels? Financially, I'm pretty much where I was when I was 28.'

When I was in art school, I worried that being a painter seemed like it could be an elusive dream, and fashion seemed so much more secure.

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

Most of my friends from college became dental hygienists or went into retail, a lot went into sales. They all started getting married and having kids and buying homes and I was still living like a college student.

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

I knew I'd have to go to work in real estate or something else or I could never finish my novel.

All that running around in my underwear put money in my pockets. I can focus on working in interesting movies without having to worry about supporting myself.

My friends started having children after college, while I was pursuing this crazy acting career and living hand to mouth. Plus, all my boyfriends were artists struggling to make a living. Having kids didn't make any sense - why would I take on more of a financial burden when I couldn't even afford a dog?

I am very fortunate to have a career. I always have to act. I don't know if I'll have a career to support it for the rest of my life, but I know I'll always act.

The more you live, the better an actor you are, but maybe I'd like to do something else on the side. Something to pay the bills as well.

Obviously it's much easier to say that you're going to follow your passions when you're financially secure, but at least we can take solace in the fact that we now have the time to pursue the things that we really want to pursue because now the option of doing things just for the money isn't necessarily there.

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

I left school at 16 and skipped university to work, initially as a waiter. I think I missed out on what would have been great years.

My career has been very strange. My career is like a heart monitor. I get involved in a good project now and then to keep things going. And then I make things that I work on that I hope are going to be good so I can make a living and keep a roof over the heads of those little monsters I have in my house.

When I had my first show at Artists Space in 1979, I imagined my life like game show. There were two doors: one door had a big dollar sign on it, and the other just had sort of a blurry picture of a newspaper - the money door or the critical response and acclaim door.

I was at the mercy of somebody else to just give me a job in the years after 'Boy Meets World' ended, whereas if I had gone to college and had when a Plan B, and it was something else that I loved, I could've walked away at any point.

I don't think, because I'm going to school for something else, that I will stop being an actress.

Hopefully, comics will be enough to support me after I graduate.

When I decided to go to art school, it wasn't necessarily something I thought I needed. No one talked about graduate school when I was an undergrad. I went on to a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and that transition from Yale to the Studio Museum, that was the real beginning of my professional career.

I don't think young people are prepared for the moment of reckoning at the end of college - if you even go to college - where you have to get off of the hamster wheel and decide, 'Wait, where do I go from here?'