Marge Piercy Quotes

I feel like I'm a professional. I've been a professional for a number of years. I'm a businesswoman and a tax lawyer and a professional and so that's how I treat other people.

I've had lots of good career advice over the years. I've learned that you must always arrive knowing your lines, you must hit your marks, you must be punctual and cheerful and kind. I'm always irritated with young people who misbehave and young actors who are temperamental. I don't think there's any need for it.

A profession is a body of men who voluntarily measure their work by a higher standard than their clients demand. To be professionally acceptable, a policy must be sound as well as salable. Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.

The main thing I do is to carry myself as best as I can on my pro level.

Here in America, people are very professional.

I've acted professionally since I was 16.

The most important thing is how you are as a person, and then like a professional person.

You can always be more professional.

I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, a sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) can bring things to a halt if their particular demands are not met. (Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round - but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows.

As professionals, we just try to keep the jokes to a minimum, when we're in a certain situation. When we're not doing that, we're joking.

The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.

I think that I probably break on set more than I make other people break. I've realized recently that, in my everyday social life, I'm a very easygoing person, but when it comes to work, I'm pretty type - A. I'm very focused and I take it maybe too seriously sometimes. So, when I'm on set, even when there are really funny people that I'm in the scenes with, I'm generally good at not breaking too often.

I think truth as an idea should be left to the philosophers and perhaps religious leaders and politicians, and professional people who deal with that idea.

I've always just simply seen myself as an actor. And I believe that it serves me well to just think in terms of my craft. If hypothetically, I saw myself only as a sex symbol, or as some other limited stereotype, I think I would feel like a complete failure.

Never shake hands with colleagues in court; the customers think you're making deals.

My professional persona never loosens its grip, keeping an eye on me at all times.

I've learned, having been on a lot of sets, the good news is that by definition you are surrounded by experts. They get fired if they're not - unlike in the theatre!

I don't have to assert my virility. I think my career has shown that I'm not exactly a pantywaist. But I do take pride in my work, even to the point of being the first one on the set in the morning. I'm a professional.

I think we're really hungry for family in America, especially when I feel like people are really pulled apart from their families. So, we were interested in the idea of what the extreme version of that would be.

I'm kind of loath to pick one project over another or whatever. You go into every film sort of thinking it'll be your best work, and that's necessary. I think in this business, you really have to be forward-looking the whole time. I think nostalgia is sort of the death knell for any artist.

I think people are wise to keep love and work separate.

Get the big view of your job. Think, really think your present job is important. That next promotion depends mostly on how you think toward your present job.

You tell yourself that you're not auditioning but of course you work like crazy, and you prepare like mad. And you think, "Well, I won't get that job. But maybe they'll have another job sometime, and they'll remember that I was good."

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

You would hope that coworkers who are dating can act professionally. But then again, some people can handle it, and some people can't. And those who can't kind of ruin it for the rest of us. Sometimes it's hard to be around an office relationship that went sour. When two actors have to be onscreen together, it can get really, really awful.