Early Career Challenges Quotes

In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in competition with adults.

Here's what my CV usually does not say: I was trained as a teacher. My first job lasted less than 60 days. I was an assistant professor at a good college at Delhi University, but I found it very political, very suffocating. At the age of 23, you're not very tolerant of those things.

I was 20 years old when I started playing in the Premier League. Maybe mentally I wasn't quite prepared for it, and that has earned me a reputation.

I just kind of muddled through in my 20s. I did whatever I got offered, to be honest, to pay the bills. I didn't really know what I was doing. There are some actors in their 20s who are very sure. I wasn't very sure what I was doing. I feel like I've only really just got going.

Everyone has to suffer the gimmicks and other stunts and machinations when they're starting out - only at the time, it doesn't feel like suffering; it's fun and different then. But a little fame goes a long way, and then one tries to cast off part of the heavy burden - a burden one can never totally escape.

But I've never been really rebellious. I've got a lot of support and I'm not pushed so hard that I feel like I'm going to burn out, which is what happens to a lot of actors in their early twenties.

I used to work at Sirius. And when I got my job at Sirius, I was only 21. It was my first job out of college. And when I think back to what 21 was, though, you're an idiot.

The first couple of years in the minors were tough for me. My numbers were there, but being away from home so young was tough.

When I was starting out there was no Internet, there wasn't this sense that you could be connected to other writers around the world. And that created a kind of innocence, or parochial quality, even in NYC.