David Wain Quotes

I think my very best work came out when I was about 60, not when I was 20. I was publishing all the time when I was in my 20s, and some of those poems I still like. And there were a few after 60, and in my 70s, that I like. But they became fewer and fewer.

Actors have limited time. We also have a shelf life.

Being a comedian is probably the only job apart from undertaking that isn't age restricted.

One thing you can't beat in this world is time. I learnt that the hard way. You can't play basketball forever. You can't play football forever. You can't bodybuild forever. I mean you CAN do it, but not at a high level against younger guys who have more time and have not reached their peaks yet. There's only so much the body can do and once you're done, you can't go back in time.

I want to keep - this seems so corny - I want to keep growing as an artist.

For me to make a living acting silly for as long as I can get away with it, I think the most viable way to make that happen is to evolve into more traditional comedy. I've really been putting in the work.

My curiosity and my appetite for evolving as an actor is one of the main components of me still working today in the business.

If a man begins writing at thirty, by the time he is fifty or sixty, the bulk of his work has been done. By the time he is eighty, he's got nothing more, you know?

Rock and Roll does have its limits as far as the aging process. You want to go out there and play while you're at your peak, right? I think that's encouraging us to keep going out on the road - to maximize the playing at the moment.

I've been doing stand-up since '89.

I did six series for the BBC and that was enough. I've been writing for ten years, which is more challenging artistically.

I don't think anybody in my graduating class would have figured that I would be doing full-on single-camera comedies or sitcoms, or anything like that, but it certainly has been a part of my career.

I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.

The peak of a career can only last so long. You go up and you try to maintain it. But, it can only last so long and then you're going to go down.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

If I can make programmes when I'm 95, that would be fine. But I would think I'll have had enough by then.

I refuse to be one of those artists who, 10 years from now, they're bitter about the rise and the fall of their career. I understand that somewhere there's a peak and a crest for me, and I'm going to enjoy all levels. I'm going to enjoy this ride that I'm on, and when it slows down, that's when it will be time for another phase of my life.

It's certainly not a shock to find that the industry has no imagination. I think people don't know what it is I do. Because half the time you're talking to people who are in their 20s, and I've been doing this for over 25 years.

I have no intention of retiring; I can't imagine not doing stand-up. That's where I started and where I'll be.

An outgrowth of having a long career is that I have a lot of interesting things around that I get to revisit, and someday get to the place where they become something that I want to do next.

For some reason, it seems like pop writers, it's like they just get worse or something over time. And then you're really jealous of movie directors whose careers seem to grow and they'll be 70 years old and still doing these incredible jobs. I'm going to reverse that, I hope.

As a creative person, you want to have a foothold and sense of progress.

I enjoy encouraging and inspiring people to pursue their purpose in the arts. To help cultivate and develop their instrument.

I want a long career in music, so you've gotta keep trying things out; it's gotta get progressively better.

I have found that people who really want to work at 'Saturday Night Live' and pursue it get pretty close. You have to be funny - but everyone who works there, it was their dream to work there. So it's kind of nice in that way - there's a lot of people who say, 'I just always wanted to do this, and now I'm doing it.'