James Ivory Quotes

Although I always said that I wanted to be a writer from childhood, I hadn't actually done much about it until I came to London.

Coming to Vancouver was the best decision of my life.

New York is a wonderful place to be up, an awful place to be down.

I was actually the one who decided to move to LA. Mom and I were driving on Sunset Boulevard during one of our trips back to see her family, and I said, 'Can we just stay?' So we did.

I live in New York simply because I don't know any better. I moved there when the show went off the air a couple of years after that.

I'm not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

Could I have walked out then? If I had, Terry wouldn't have accepted the job.

By 1988, I was living in New York myself.

I came to New York in 1948 at 19, after one term at Harvard. Well, Harvard wasn't for me at all.

When I went to live in New York, I didn't mean to stay there, but here I am.

When I decided to come to Sacramento, all my friends thought I was crazy. They said they still have cows and sheep around Arco.

You go to school in New York because you want New York and the life that comes with it.

In late 2004, I left my much-maligned home state of New Jersey for the supposedly greener pastures of Astoria, Queens. I'd finally be in the mix, living off the subway line, able to go from audition to audition during the day and from late night show to late night show in the wee hours of the morning.

In New York, you are constantly faced with this very urgent decision that you have to make, about every twenty minutes...you have to decide, immediately, you have to go "Ohmigod. Do I look at the most beautiful woman in the world or the craziest guy in the world?"

When I came to Mumbai in 2005 for a holiday, I received work offers. So I decided to stay back and pursue a modelling and acting career.

I drove to Nashville a few times, met with some people and hung out, went to the Opry, and that kind of stuff. I made the decision - you've got to be present to win, so I packed it up and moved out here, and it's been great. It's been the best decision I ever made.

New York is my favorite city. I would love to move there one day.

I go down the street thinking, 'Oh my God, I live in New York.' But then I think, 'Oh my God, I'm on Broadway!'

There's more people to ignore in New York or Boston than there are in Milwaukee, but I would still ignore them, probably.

I always thought I would move to New York after graduation, but, instead, I moved to Los Angeles. I realized I was more scared of that choice than I was of New York, and I thought, at 22, I should get it over with.

In every moment, we make a choice about which direction we are going to go. Once we realize that this is a self-correcting and self-organizing universe, then we don't have to look any further than our own life circumstances, the relationships and situations that we are in, to begin the transformation.

Fundamentally, we are a product of choice, not nature (genes) or nurture (upbringing, environment).

Every time you have to make a choice about anything, think Does this go toward or away from what I want? Always choose what goes toward what you want.

I'm not someone who's an immigrant who's struggling in that way, but between New York and L.A., I had someone tell me very early on, "If you're going to be broke anywhere, it's better to be broke in L.A. At least the weather is nice." I was like, "You're right." I didn't take them up on that.

In New York the stakes are so high. In urban centers the stakes are so high. You marry the wrong person, you go to the wrong college, you take the wrong job. Any of these things could really get you in trouble down the road. Or in your mind anyway. You're afraid to make any move, it's paralyzing.