Helen Hunt Quotes

I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.

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.

For a long time, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was desperate to find something that fit me and I just decided that if I could organically make a professional living out of the things that interested me, then I would be a happy person.

I'm more interested in my life than I am in my career. I don't want to not work. I do enjoy working, but not to the point where that's the only thing I focus on.

I went through a lot of occupations. I was questioning my contribution to the world.

If you're successful at a young age, no matter the profession, there has to come a time when you reevaluate everything, what it means to you. 'Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?'

What about the rat race in the first place? Is it worthwhile? Or are you just buying into someone else's definition of success? Only you can decide that, and you'll have to decide it over and over and over. But if you think it's a rat race, before you drop out, take a deep breath. Maybe you picked the wrong job. Try again. And then try again.

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.

Who can worry about a career? Have a life.

I don't want to spend my life doing jobs that I don't care about.

That my business success is equal to my personal life.

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

This profession has fed me creatively and allowed me to have a home life and a private life.

Not sure of my place in the world (still up for debate) and not sure what I wanted to do with my life (not really up for debate).

I am just a normal professional with a great job and a great life.

I worked in an insurance office for six years, and it was there that I just woke up one day and realised there was something massively lacking in my life, and a non-contributory pension and a subsidised canteen could not fill it.

I've worked hard my whole life, since I was a little kid. But now it's a point in my life now where I can just enjoy it, but at the same time I still need to work.

I don't know what I am doing tomorrow. But I know one thing for sure: the day I stop enjoying my work, I will pack up and leave.

There was a point where I was making four movies a year. I was always on a set. I had no stories to tell. I was feeling empty. My life was just luggage and hotels and from set to set, from character to character. And one day, I said, 'And where is mine?' You know? And the moment I started to feel that fear, I stopped and I slowed down.

I had a very good job in corporate America, but I quickly knew that was not how I was wired.

A career is all very well, but no one lives by work alone.

For a long time, I was a career woman and that was it.

Sometimes, taking a job is like going to a shrink or something, where you get to know yourself better.

Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.

As an academic, this was not the lifestyle I had planned for myself. Now I see myself everywhere.