Per Mertesacker Quotes

I'm not saying I want a film career because I think I'm too good for television. I'm simply saying I want more control over my life.

Where I am now, you're very much at everybody else's mercy. You have no control over your career in a lot of ways. It's just important to know what your own goals are, because that's empowering.

It's important to drive your own ship, and it's your career, so you might as well take it by the reins.

What I wanted more than anything was a long career.

Don't you think it astonishing that, at 58, I am still working at improving my career?

We want to start them thinking that they're responsible for their own career.

I don't think I've necessarily been able to pick and choose in my career; I don't know how many people do. But I'll tell you what I've been able to do: I've been able to say no. It is the only thing you can hold on to sometimes, is that ability to say 'no.' And I think that in that way, you can create some kind of career.

After having seen the job done on that first show of mine, I realized that I felt like I wanted to work again for a short while. Two, three years, then stop.

I'm 28, your career is a long time. We're not tennis players or football players. I'm just about reaching what should be my peak year.

Who am I to tell people what to do with their own careers and how they're doing?

I always wanted to be in charge of my own career. I like having my own imprint.

I could have continued being a speechwriter for as long as I wanted.

I never felt my career was going backwards.

It's such a luxury as an actor to think of your career as something you're choosing for yourself, because so much of the time as an actor you're just hoping that exciting projects come your way.

Any decision that's made about my career is ultimately my decision, and it's helped me not to plan too much. I've never been the guy thinking, 'I want to do a play this year, I want to do this kind of movie or this kind of character.' I don't have that sort of control.

I can't complain about my career, that's for sure.

I really do like to work. I will work again. But on my terms.

It took a long time to get to the place in my career where I could pick and choose what I wanted to do.

I'm thrilled with how my career is evolving.

Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value, any value, to anybody, to somebody, and watch that value compound into a career.

There's no one actor in particular that I want to model my career after, except for the people who have been able to keep their career varied and who choose things that interest them. That opportunity is all I really want.

I treat my career like it just happened yesterday.

In most careers, you find something you do well, and you tie an increasingly larger bow on the package.

I think it's really important to remember that it's a long life, and it's a long career. In a perfect world, your career will be long. It does not begin and end with any one job. The point is to continue to have longevity in your career.

I don't want to be an action star, an action star's life is so short. I want my life to get longer, I want my career to get longer.