Wilbur Smith Quotes

I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn't me. I'm not a scholar; I didn't have a scholar's attitude toward literature.

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

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

I feel like the experience I gained at university has really helped to inform me as far as who I wanted to become as an actor and what I wanted to do.

I was going to be a lawyer, and I had studied hard, but then it suddenly occurred to me in a very deep, profound way that I didn't want to keep practicing law for the rest of my life.

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.

Definitely working on 'Deal or No Deal' was a learning experience, and it helped me to understand what I would rather be doing.

I loved my boarding school, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't have a career.

I'm turning 22, so I want to start getting into work that reflects where I'm at in life now.

People go to college to find who they are as a person and find what they want to do in life, and I kind of already know that so it would be like I'd be taking a step back or something.

I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and was going through this growth phase.

After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.

I got my Bachelor's degree in nursing and worked nine years - even taught nursing in a college - before I stopped and said to myself, 'This is not who I am. I am not really a nurse inside. I'm a writer.'

I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn't want to be a journalist - I wanted to be a historian.

I gave up the idea of having a career when I was 24. Sounds glamorous, but I've been doing things since then, and part of those adventures was to make films because I realised I was actually quite good at it and I enjoyed it.

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

I went to Carnegie Mellon and was an electrical engineer, but electrical engineering wasn't right for me.

I didn't start thinking about what I wanted to do professionally until I was 17. I was a hippie, but I did write.

I did some good stuff over in the U.K., but I wasn't consistently working. For a while there, I was going, 'Do I really want to do this - should I go back to university?'

Before 'Broad City,' I had a lot of jobs that I knew were not for me, but when you're young and don't know exactly what you're going to do, if an opportunity comes up, you feel like, 'This is an opportunity; I have to try it.'

I started working at a time when most of my friends were still figuring their lives out.

I was at Sussex University studying English lit and philosophy, I had two essays due in and three seminars that day, and at the same time I was messaging my manager because I'd just started to put together the pieces of like, 'Wow. I really don't want to be doing any essays anymore. Why don't I just give this music thing a go?'

I had been saying to myself for a good many years that I was really a writer and that I was in advertising temporarily.

College was such a pivotal time for me. It's a time when you have so much growth, and you kind of can choose one of many different paths.

My career direction has probably been guided as much by curiosity and my personality as by my early influences.