Jami Attenberg Quotes

To find one's calling is perhaps not the easiest thing in the world, but probably the most important.

Making films has never just been a job to me; it is my life. I have some interests outside of acting - I sing and I've written books, for instance - but acting is what keeps me going: it's what I do; it gives life purpose.

I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to.

I've always considered myself lucky that I do not have many passions. There's only one pursuit that I have ever truly loved, and that pursuit is writing. This means, conveniently enough, that I never had to search for my destiny; I only had to obey it.

When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician.

I've spent most of my life writing and developing everything that I've wanted to be in - which is why I started writing in the first place.

I really knew with every fiber of my being that acting was - for lack of a better word - my calling.

When you find something that you really love to do, you kind of just know instantly that, OK yeah, I want to do this for the rest of my life.

I realised that acting is not my god.

One of the things my dad told me when I was growing up was, 'Find your calling. Find what you're meant to do.' When I found animation, I knew this was it.

It is not peace we seek but meaning.

The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.

Something's your vocation if it keeps making more of you.

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

I live art, I respect people, and I've found what I want to do in life - I've found what makes me happy.

Music has always been my back door to life. It is important for people to find something that excites them. I like the concept that if you do what excites you, you will be rewarded generously, whatever form reward takes, which is not necessarily money.

At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.

It was never the fame or fortune that drove me to act. It was something I love and enjoy doing it. A lot of people identify who they are by what they do and that's not me. It's what I do but not who I am. Who I am is a parent. I'm a family man.

For me, the magazine was always the heart of what my life was all about, and the other half was living the life.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

I've never felt that acting was my vocation - never had that tortured thing. I love acting, but it doesn't feed my soul.

If I walk away from music, I walk away from myself.

My hobbies just sort of gradually became my vocation.

Through acting and film, I felt that my life had a sense to it. I felt I had a mission.

Acting was a godsend. I found myself because I loved acting.