Creative Careers Quotes

I don't want to inspire the next generation of tight ends or linebackers to play the game. If I could inspire the next generation of architects and technology leaders and writers and illustrators and film directors, then I feel like I have fulfilled my life purpose.

Actors wait tables, directors work at video stores.

There's this sense of being strange, which is at the heart of every creative person. Every writer, every actor, every director knows who Ripley is. We've made careers and lives out of pretending, making things up, inhabiting other people's stories and lives. That's what I do every day. . . . The story is so audacious and subversive: a central character who behaves badly and isn't apparently caught. That intrigued me no end.

I would've been intrigued by being a film director. I would've been intrigued by politics. I thought about architecture.

I want people to know about these visionary artists. I want people to know what they stand for and (that) they are representing something unique, something fresh. I am just so excited about their careers.

My older brother Joel became an art teacher; my brother Rip ultimately became a television producer and singer and actor himself.

People are generally badly advised when they're starting out in the creative field.

I think there's a great storytelling tradition in the restaurant business that tends to attract people with an oral tradition of bulls - ting and bollocking. Creative people, people for whom the 9-to-5 world is not attractive or impossible. It seems that way. There are a lot of stories in the business, and a lot of characters - and it seems to attract its share of artists and writers and people who hope to do something creative in their lives.

They went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers.

I think it's a real shame so many schools have taken out the hands-on classes. Art, music, auto mechanics, cooking, sewing, these are all things that can turn into jobs. You know, wood shop, steel shop, welding. These are all things that can turn into great careers, get kids interested. Things they can do with other students. Other things for our word thinkers: journalism clubs, drama clubs.

Each year, more people want to become artists.

I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes... but I'm not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers... I want to show them that there's so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!

If you grow up saying, 'I want to be a lawyer,' everyone says, 'Let's give her everything she needs to be a lawyer.' But if you say 'I want to be an artist or a dancer or a painter,' it's, 'Oh, she'll grow out of it.'

Making a living in the arts, though, creates so many jobs for other people.

When you tell your kids they can be anything, you've got to be careful. I told my kids that, and I ended up with a music producer and an interior designer. But they're doing it.

People sometimes have a view of programming that is something solitary and very technical. But programming is among the most creative, expressive, and social careers.

Your parents would not be happy if you came home and said you wanted to grow up to be a chef or a rock star.

A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."

One thing I hate about school committees today is that they cut arts programs out of the curriculum because they say the arts aren't a way to make a living.

If you had asked me growing up what a stylist does or what a magazine editor does, I would have had no clue - how do you research something like that when you are a first-born child of an immigrant who only grew up knowing doctor, engineer, and lawyer as careers?

In India, writers are underpaid. Universities should start new courses to create more opportunities for them.

Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour.

I don't think I would be here in an interview if YouTube wasn't in existence, if social media hadn't been developed, or if these platforms for artists to promote and develop their own careers hadn't become available.