The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.
How little is the promise of the child fulfilled in the man.
But I was so wrapped up in sports growing up as a kid, that I think I was going to grow to be a pro ball player. But I found out real quick that was not going to happen.
The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.
It's the most extraordinary and saddest thing, the amount of talent out there not being seen.
I had this total obsession that I would have my first movie at the Empire when I was 24, so it was a big disappointment that it didn't happen.
I drank the Kool-Aid of being a network star. Once it didn't happen, I realized it wasn't the best version of my comedy.
Milan offered me something. I was very interested by the project. It did not happen for many reasons.
How great a Possibility, how small a realized Result.
Yes, I would have rather finished up in Pittsburgh.
I wasn't granted the opportunity to fight some of the best guys in the world. And that was something that was not on my end by any sense of the imagination.
Barry Goldwater once said ruefully, and I know how he feels. "It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be President . . . except me."
I do not have any regrets about not having the opportunity to do my walk with the crown on stage.
If it had been what was supposed to happen, it would have happened.
You don't want to dream too big in case it doesn't happen.
Tomorrow lurks in us, the latency to be all that was not achieved before.
But what I'd really like to tell you is I never dreamed of being in the Hall of Fame. Standing here with all these great players was beyond any of my dreams.
The way 'Showgirls' was presented to me, it sounded like an interesting project, and it kind of just went off the rails as we were doing it.
I actually thought I wanted to be Thomas Wolfe, but I didn't have the talent. So I thought I could edit Thomas Wolfe.
I wanted to be a huge star and I have failed.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
