Edwin Catmull Quotes

Since I quit banking, all my major life decisions, when they could, have revolved around writing.

My father came to Chennai at the age of 16 from a village in Coimbatore. He was an artist and was clear he wanted to do something, so he came to Chennai and joined an art course for eight years before he came into films.

It wasn't that I left acting; it's just that I put it aside while I set about becoming a comic.

I remember I was supposed to take the bar exam that summer just when we got the chance to make our first feature. I told my parents I wasn't going to take the bar exam, and they were pretty upset about it.

Eventually, I went to college to study psychology, but I was getting more and more TV roles, so I thought, 'You know? It's kind of like psychology, but a little more selfish.' I took a break from school, moved to L.A., and never went back.

When I was doing engineering, one day I thought that I want to be an actor, and apart from acting, I want to produce also.

Really, my biggest risk was just the initial step to quit my day job to do music. I was packaging and shipping for an art gallery in Manhattan; I went to school for painting, so I always wanted to work around artwork, even though I wasn't really contributing anything to the scene.

I went to university and studied English literature, and I forgot about music. I was gonna be a journalist. But then I decided to try and be a backing singer, and my mum was like, "Go for it." If that didn't work, I was gonna go to law school. I was just being boringly sensible; trying to be a singer felt a bit indulgent.

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville.

I graduated high school a year early and moved to Los Angeles to go to acting school, which is hilarious.

After a couple of years at Vertigo, I realized that if I was going to be a professional artist, I'd have to devote myself to it full time, so I ended up leaving my job there and went freelance.

I was working in a day job in marketing but I had my sights on doing an open-mic night.

I had a nice talk with my parents and told them I was going to give singing a go. I will go back to studying, but I'd love to get a degree in writing.

There came a point when I was thinking, 'I'm now 26, 27, working on music every day, but I'm not making, like, a lot of money. What's happening? I guess I'll just start making dog clothes.'

At one point, I just decided that it might be more creatively rewarding to put my time into writing on stuff that I could really be proud of rather than trying to get a one-episode part on 'Modern Family' or something.

When I graduated, I sort of went from school to being a cartoonist, and I couldn't draw.

I was working as a software engineer in Infosys. I quit because I lost interest in it. I had a group of friends who wanted to make it big in films, and that's when the audition for 'Malarvady Arts Club' happened. I got selected, and it opened the doors to my dream world.

I've been painting since I was a kid.

I think when I was 16, I thought I was going to go to law school. And then, once I got into college, I decided I don't like to read that much or to study that much.

In America, you can't say to your family, 'Hey, I'm off to L.A. to make it as a songwriter; sorry I can't pay for the dentist.'

I left school to concentrate on racing. It was a family decision between my mum, dad and myself.

Music is what I always dreamed of doing. But at a certain point in my career, they convinced me to act, and that started me acting.

I went to drama school but soon realised I was terrible at acting, so I ditched drama school for art school.

I wanted to be a car pinstriper, but there was nobody to teach me how to do it. So I said, 'Music's good too. I'll do that maybe, since I can't work out how to do this pinstriping.'

I chose when I was 30 to change my life entirely and become a director and sit in the dark and that's what I love doing.