Alan Arkin Quotes

The success of 'Scrubs' allowed me to pursue anything I felt passionately about without having to worry about money. It allowed me to spend my summer work shopping my show at a nonprofit theater.

I don't have to work just to work anymore. More interesting parts come my way, so I can afford to say, 'I don't want to make that.'

In my short career, I tend not to repeat myself. I have no interest in redoing something. Sometimes that makes people angry, and maybe it's not the best thing for me commercially. But it's the best thing for me artistically, and it's the best thing for my heart.

When you have a job you know you'd do for free, it takes a lot of the pressure away to be successful at it. So if it's doing theater in New York or teaching acting, I'm down for all of it.

Hell, if I didn't do stunts, I'd have had to be a bartender, or something else that didn't pay well.

Frankly, I think if I won the lottery and won a billion dollars, I'd still want to continue doing this job. I love expressing myself through it. I've gotten to really love acting. And I've gotten to know Big Bird from the inside out so thoroughly it's like playing my kid. I can't imagine deliberately stopping.

I'd like to just work - steadily work - and do parts that I enjoy doing.

The best piece of advice I ever got from anyone was when Spike Jonze said, 'Take money out of the equation.' And that's actually when Vice started making lots of money. That's when I stopped worrying about money and started worrying about what I wanted to do.

Talent will only take you so far, and it is your ability to feel the music and explore a movement that will bring you the greatest pleasure in dance.

I'm not particularly a career-oriented guy. I'm lucky. I can make really interesting films much of the time with interesting people yet be anonymous, have a private life. But, I'd like to have the choice of the better roles.

The three things I said when I came out of school were I want to work consistently, I want to do good work and I want to be paid fairly, and that's happened. But I didn't become an actress for the money. I do it for other reasons.

I actually went to study journalism at Northwestern, thinking that would be my Plan B for a career. But then I realized, if I'm going to struggle and make no money, I might as well do what I really want to do.

I personally want to work with great directors and great actors. My thing is about being inspired. You want money to come, but money doesn't always come with great art. At the end of the day, it's about being satisfied with yourself as a human being. It's important to me to try to make that happen.

The physical lot of … workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality...

What Is a Good Job? It is a job for which the worker is qualified and for which he has been prepared. It is one which will not enslave him for life, but which shall employ him for as long a time as he needs it in order to win his own economic safety for life. It is one which will reward him lavishly — not in wages or in any form of money payments since money is far too unstable a medium for such purposes — but it shall reward him with due amounts of the actual things and services which he requires in the carrying on of his daily existence.

I go broke a lot... I go broke a lot because I have this understanding that whatever I put out there, if I really am doing what's right, it's going to be rewarding, you know?

I don't play for job security.

I'm not always the first person to run out and see something I'm in. I don't know; for me, that's not why I did it. I did it because I wanted to act. I don't really think about the end result. I don't feel like I have to see it - for me, it already happened.

I'm not exactly in a position where I get to be super-picky about the roles I get. But I would also never want to be a part of something that I think is poor in taste or doesn't align with what I believe in.

When you get to a point where you're successful enough that you can say, 'I don't have to take any job anymore,' and you're still good at what you do, how do you decide what work to take on? I think the answer is that you pursue what you enjoy. In my case, it's variety.

'ER' was an all-consuming universe, but I don't have a single regret. It gave me some of the greatest friendships I have and afforded me one of the rarest commodities in an actor's life, which is the financial security to pick and choose jobs for factors besides the paycheck.

I've always freelanced as an actor, and you always have to worry about the next paycheck. When I booked 'True Blood,' I promised myself I would take advantage of the fact that for the first time in my career, I could afford to turn down big money to go and do small, character-driven indies.

I am lucky enough not to have to take jobs unless I love the material.

I never want to have to take certain roles, because I want to maintain a certain level of artistic credibility. But sometimes you're forced to do things for the money.

I hate the school of thought that says work is work and that you have to be unhappy at work because that's what work is. I totally respect the fact that not everyone has the choices that I have, and that some people have to work jobs that they don't like because they don't have any other options.