Cliff Robertson Quotes

I grew up in a show-business family, but we were working-class show business. There was nothing glamorous about it. You had great things one day and the next day, nothing.

A business like acting is 90% luck. You can be a star one minute and out of work the next.

But since day one, we've always been kinda up against it. So at the end, it's not surprising that we were kind of led along for so many months and didn't know what the fate of the show was gonna be. It was... in a weird way, just kind of that was the way it's always been.

I know I can't plan in this business, but I'm going to keep going as long as I keep getting close... So far, I feel lucky and infinitely grateful for the successes that I've had. I'm just going to keep working hard, and whatever happens, happens.

In our business, you never really know who you're going to get and who you're going to work with. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's awful, and you gotta do what you gotta do.

I thrive on chaos and difficult situations. I guess that's who I am.

I was raised in an environment where chaos was the norm, so I was at my best in chaos.

True adventure begins when everything goes wrong.

Life is a game of piquet played in a bramble bush in very bad weather.

I'd always wanted to be on Broadway one day, but it seemed like a dream that might be unattainable. This business has a lot of ups and downs and I learned that pretty quickly.

If there's one thing that's certain in business, it's uncertainty.

If you look around at the people in show business today they are basically the people who didn't give up.

It's so crazy in Hollywood.

I've learned through experience that you can't ever predict what's going to happen with any show. When I signed on to 'Ugly Betty,' I just prayed that I wouldn't get fired after the pilot, and four years later, I was still doing it.

I spent 26 years in the business without ever knowing what I was doing a month from now.

LIfe has got all those twists and turns. You've got to hold on tight and off you go.

If 'Party of Five' hadn't done well, it would have been a bunch of names involved in the demise. But if 'Time of Your Life' doesn't do well, it will be my name. You have to prepare for the worst. This is a very fickle business.

I'm a showgirl. After 20 years in show business, I've learned to roll with the punches.

I've been in this business for 40 years - you do a show, and you don't know what's going to come of it.

You and I and everybody in show business and the entertainment industry fly by the seat of our pants. We don't know quite what is going to happen.

Like everybody in show business, you think you're going to wake up one day, and it's all going to be taken away from you. I think we all share an insecurity in that way, everybody in show business - the ones I talk to, anyway.

Show business is - you're there by somebody's fluke. And as long as somebody likes you, and the show is going well, you're fine. I'd do anything. There's so much I want to do.

In 40-odd years in show business, some years I could do no wrong, and some years I could do nothing right. Show business. I owe it everything - it owes me nothing.

I knew what show business was, which was why I didn't want in on that action. I saw what happens! You get it, and then you lose it.

My life has always been chaotic. From the time I got dressed in the back of a deflated, flat-tired, fish-smelling station wagon for Rocky. It's always been do it yourself, kind of like paper-clip it together.