Jonathan Dimbleby Quotes

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn't just a new livelihood. It was a new life.

At 17, I realized that it's going to be a tough decision to make, but I had the clarity of thought to walk out of cricket and try my luck in acting.

I started studying at 26. Before that, I never thought of acting as something that I would ever try.

I like the idea of being so passionate about everything I do and the fact that I might wake up tomorrow and say 'I want to be a chef,' and just pour myself into that.

I was working at a phone company. I got tired of my life and wanted to change it, so I did.

'Tyrannosaur's an arrival for me, but it's also the first step into a new career. I don't want to be moonlighting at this, like I have done with acting. Y'know, I think I've found my career at 37 years old.

When I left Michigan and I came to New York, that was my goal, to be a professional dancer. And I sort of fell into singing by accident in a way.

I still love hockey. It's just I'm at a different stage of my life and I think I'm just ready to grow in other ways outside of just being a hockey player.

When it comes down to it, at the end of the day, I need more out of my life and I need to push myself harder. And if at the end of the day I don't have it, then I don't have it, but at least I'm going to put myself out there. If I fail, I'm going to fail terrifically.

I didn't have any money. I had a sense of terrible loss. But what I also had was a fire in my belly. I wasn't going to go back to waiting tables. I felt I had to be better at fronting a band.

In terms of writing about horses, I fell backwards into that. I was intent on getting a Ph.D., becoming a professor, and writing on history but I got sick 14 years ago when I was 19. Getting sick derailed that plan completely.

I had grand visions of being in professional sports. But when reality set in, I went, 'Oh, OK. I'll just move to Hollywood and be an actor.' I didn't want to look back on my life and wonder, 'What if I had done this? Or I had done that?'

I was 19 when I got my first passport as an adult. I had moved from California to New York City and was living out of a suitcase, staying with friends. I'd just finished filming my first movie, 'Ordinary People,' but I didn't know whether acting was what I wanted to do with my life.

Modelling was never in my plan. Never.

There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

My advice would be to follow your dream. Most of my life, I was in second place before I came in first place. I hope that inspired people to never give up.

My advice: Don't quit. When I got to New York City, I lived so far below the poverty line, because I didn't give in and get a job at 7-Eleven. I think you can thrive in misery.

I had to know if I could make it somewhere else. I did not want to go through the rest of my life wondering what might have been without putting myself to the test.

I think I went through my phase of feeling sort of invisible when I left my small hometown in Canada and moved to the big city of Vancouver. I kind of had to decide right there in that moment what I was going to do with the rest of my life and make a thousand decisions after finishing high school. Fortunately, I chose acting.

Retiring was scary and it was tough to give up gymnastics, but so many great opportunities have come from it that I never expected.

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.

I also did an Ozzy piece for him, and so I got hired. Everything happened really fast. I can't give people advice, because everything in my life changed completely in less than a year and it's still not something I am used to.

I made the decision to come back to New York, quit my job and move to Paris.

I finished up my graduate degree in quantum mechanics, but underwent a bit of a personal crisis, recognizing that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. It was too abstract, too far removed from human concerns.