Lev Grossman Quotes

I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer, which I turned out to be. But I was always curious about other things too, and what if I got interested in history or the law?

I thought I would, you know, go to college, get to law school, finish, and then get a job and work as a lawyer, but that proved to be not a good fit for me.

When I finished high school, I was 16, and in Argentina you have to choose a career right after high school. There is no such thing as a liberal arts education.

I did engineering, and when people asked me my career plans, I used to say I would do an MBA.

We're not a vocational school. If someone wants to get a high-paying job, I would hope that there are easier ways to do it than working through a formal computer science curriculum.

I planned on being an English teacher, but I don't know where that went.

I thought I would attend school and get an assistant position and work my way up but being in NY and seeing the pace of everything, is very inspiring.

I realized that I would have some very tough sledding, and I was very discouraged because I didn't see much hope of getting into the field I wanted to get into with no college education.

The morning after my high-school graduation found me up early job hunting. The dream of college I put on the back burner.

It didn't seem remotely possible. I had no idea how people got those jobs, I didn't know what the steps were, it never even dawned on me. It seemed so outside the realm of possibility.

I mean, you work and you try and find the work that suits you the best and you enjoy the most.

It's the typical mid-life crisis kind of thing, where you just stop and wonder, 'Should I go back to university and get a law degree?' I kind of looked around me and thought, 'What kind of idiot am I that I've just spent the last 10 years writing novels? Financially, I'm pretty much where I was when I was 28.'

I majored in business/marketing because I was going to be a teacher and a high school basketball coach.

The decision-making process was very difficult: is this how I want my career to start, with playing Jodie Dallas on this show?

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.

No kid ever graduated school and said, 'I want to go into advertising.' Advertising is almost everyone's second or third choice.

Right out of college I was offered a job with 'Saturday Night Football' and I ended up turning it down because I really wanted to travel.

When I graduated from UCLA, I actually started interviewing for banking jobs. But at some point I realized a career in banking felt more like a continuation of school than a passion.

My dad, who had spent his life as a lecturer, said, 'That's all very well, but you need to earn a living, so why don't you teach?' I did, and 13 years later, I woke up.

It was easy for me to leave acting for school, because I wasn't really in it as an adolescent for fulfilling reasons.

I didn't want to be the archetypal sponging brother-in-law, so I didn't go into acting when I got to the States. I thought, 'No, I'll go to school and then I'll be an English teacher; that'll be fun.' But I was horrible as a teacher. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't inspire those kids to take an interest in Milton and Shakespeare and Donne.

At graduation, I assumed I'd be in publishing, but first I went to England and got a master's degree in English Literature. And then I came back to New York and had a series of publishing jobs, the way one does.

If I could really move my career much more into predominantly directing, I would jump at that.

I did something a lot of people will have to do in this economy if they want to eventually land their dream job. I turned down an offer to take a high-paying position in another field because it wouldn't fulfill me.

My agents do not like my choice to work only in New York and Israel - it's not a good career move.