Careers Quotes - Page 38

• America is proud of what it does to its writers, the way it breaks and bedevils them, rendering them deluded or drunken or dead by their own hands. To overpower its tender spirits makes America feel tough. Careers are generally short.

  Martin Amis

  Hands, America, Doe

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• Throughout my academic career, I'd given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in the computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs.

  Randy Pausch

  Computer, Academic, Seven

  Randy Pausch (2008). “The Last Lecture”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• I became, in other words, more like Holmes than the man himself: brilliant, driven to a point of obsession, careless of myself, mindless of others, but without the passion and the deep-down, inbred love for the good in humanity that was the basis of his entire career. He loved the humanity that could not understand or fully accept him; I, in the midst of the same human race, became a thinking machine.

  Laurie R. King

  Passion, Men, Thinking

  Laurie R. King (2010). “The Beekeeper's Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen”, p.287, Macmillan

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• Barbara was actually Jeff Foxworthy's interior designer when we first met. So, not only was Jeff responsible for my success in my career, he also introduced me to the woman who I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, which, I think, makes us even.

  Ron White

  Thinking, Firsts, Designer

  "Ron White: You Can't Fix Stupid". Documentary, Comedy, www.imdb.com. March 25, 2006.

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• I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Thinking, Long

  'Much Ado About Nothing' (1598-9) act 2, sc. 3, l. [262]

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• The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career.

  Markus Zusak

  Book, Thieves, Firsts

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• Error can point the way to truth, while empty-headedness can only lead to more empty-headedness or to a career in politics.

  Barry Hughart

  Errors, Way, Empty

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• An aptitude test established architecture as an alternative [career]. But what decided the matter for [Teddy Cruz] was the sight of a fourth-year architecture student sitting at his desk at a window, drawing and nursing a cup of coffee as rain fell outside. 'I don't know, I just liked the idea of having this relationship to the paper and the adventure of imagining the spaces. That was the first image that captured me.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Rain, Coffee, Adventure

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• Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  History, Genius, Fool

  "The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868 - 1869.

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• How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Motherhood, People

  "What's Wrong with the World". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton (Part Three: Feminism, or The Mistake About Woman, Chapter 3: The Emancipation of Domesticity), 1910.

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• Just for a while": Death's opening chat-up line in His great seduction, before he drugged you with soporific comforts, distracted you with minor luxuries and ensnared you with long-term payment plans. Join the Rat Race "just for a while." Concentrate on your career "just for a while." Move in with your girlfriend "just for a while." Find a bigger place, out in the burbs "just for a while." Lie down in that wooden box "just for a while.

  Christopher Brookmyre

  Girlfriend, Lying, Moving

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• When we sat down to eat I took inventory of the people in the room, and the remnants of my good mood evaporated when I realized how very little I had in common with them – the career dads, the responsible and diligent moms – and I was soon filled with dread and loneliness. I locked in on the smug feeling of superiority that married couples give off and that permeated the air – the shared assumptions, the sweet and contented apathy, it all lingered everywhere – despite the absence in the room of anyone single at which to aim this.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Mom, Sweet, Couple

  Bret Easton Ellis (2010). “Lunar Park”, p.158, Pan Macmillan

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• Having stumbled upon a tolerable career, for the first time in my life I was actually living above the poverty line. My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.

  Jon Krakauer

  Lines, Satisfaction, Poverty

  Jon Krakauer (2011). “Into Thin Air: A personal account of the Everest disaster”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

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• I’ve met plenty of embarrassing parents, but Kronos, the evil Titan Lord who wanted to destroy Western Civilization? Not the kind of dad you invited to school for Career Day.

  Rick Riordan

  Dad, School, Civilization

  Rick Riordan (2013). “Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series”, p.109, BenBella Books, Inc.

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• People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.

  David Mitchell

  Suicide, Selfish, Ideas

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• Faith is a choice like any other. If you're picking a career or a husband - or deciding whether to have a baby - there are feelings and reasons pro and con out the wazoo. But thinking it through is - at the final hour - horse dookey. You can only try out.

  Mary Karr

  Family, Faith, Baby

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• But there was no hiding from Conscience. Not in new homes and new cars. In travel. In meditation or frantic activity. In children, in good works. On tiptoes or bended knee. In a big career. Or a small cabin. It would find you. The past always did. Which was why... it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you. And found you... Who wouldn't be afraid of this?

  Louise Penny

  Children, Home, Past

  Louise Penny (2009). “The Brutal Telling: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel”, p.372, Minotaur Books

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• That's what so many people didn't understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes.

  Orson Scott Card

  Wall, Real, Home

  Orson Scott Card (2010). “Hidden Empire”, p.38, Macmillan

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• I think Oscar Wilde wrote a poem about a robin who loved a white rose. He loved it so much that he pierced his breast and let his heart's blood turn the white rose red. Maybe this sounds very sentimental, but for anybody who has loved a career as much as I've loved mine, there can be no short cuts.

  Mary Pickford

  Heart, Cutting, Thinking

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• So much of an artist's career hinges on the sense that we are going somewhere, that we are not just trapped by the four walls of wherever we are. For creative sanity, I must believe that if I just do the next right thing, a path will unfold for me.

  Julia Cameron

  Wall, Believe, Artist

  Julia Cameron (2009). “Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance”, p.82, Penguin

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• It is all too easy as an artist to allow the shape of our career to be dictated to us by others. We can so easily wait to be chosen. Such passivity invites despair. To remain healthy and vital, artists must stay proactive in their own behalf.

  Julia Cameron

  Artist, Waiting, Healthy

  Julia Cameron (2009). “Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance”, p.91, Penguin

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• I enjoy inventing things out of fun. After all, life is a game, not a career.

  Brion Gysin

  Fun, Games, Life Is

  "Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age". Book edited by Jose Ferez Kuri (p. 4), 2003.

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• Imagine you're a forty-year-old, Richard," Hamilton said to me around this time, while working as a salesman at a Radio Shack in Lynn Valley,"and suddenly somebody comes up to you saying, 'Hi, I'd like you to meet Kevin. Kevin is eighteen and will be making all of your career decisions for you.' I'd be flipped out. Wouldn't you? But that's what life is all about - some eighteen-year-old kid making your big decisions for you that stick for a lifetime." He shuddered.

  Douglas Coupland

  Kids, Years, Decision

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• [I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Culture, Citizens, Worship

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• The career of a movie star consists of helping everyone else forget their troubles. Using charm and beauty and good cheer to make life look easy.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Stars, Cheer, Looks

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Tell-All”, p.23, Random House

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