Professional Stagnation Quotes

The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.

When I got my PhD, it was a time when there were just no jobs for PhDs. Period. PhDs were getting the lowest paid technician jobs, if they were lucky, in any kind of science.

I really don't want to be a journeyman.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

I think that people who get to a certain position, and then try to ferociously defend it or build on it, it's kind of a dead-end street. You see people becoming miserable that way.

If I wanted to make spy movies for the rest of my life, that would be one thing, but I don't want to just make spy movies.

I told CBS, 'My career is going down the toilet, and you're pulling the chain.'

Even the worst job has its benefits and so does being a professional literary agent, and - I know I said this at the time but I still believe it - the worst job is the one that you know is wrong for you, but you still do it. You're afraid to quit.

Not being active, your name doesn't go out there as much, and you lose the popularity thing. Also, you're not able to make a living. This is what we do to make a living: we go out there and fight. Not being able to fight for a year and a half and not able to bring in money, it definitely sets you back.

Somewhere my dad gave up. He was really so successful at his level that after a point he could not handle failure.

I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career.

Some guys go to different teams and as they get older, they just want to ride the coattail of the younger guys. I don't want to do that.

I don't want to be in a position where I'm playing roles I'm comfortable with and making money, but doing it without feeling like I'm growing.

I'm a very famous wife but I'm still plodding along in my career.

Teaching is not the work in which a man can live and grow.

A career is a job that has gone on too long.

I remember immediately - immediately - feeling like, 'I don't want to play 'We Are Young' when I'm 35. I don't want to be defined by this.'

It's stimulating to teach a new course. To teach a course three times in a row is, I think, about the maximum for me. On the second year - you know, the saying is that first year you learn how to teach the course, the second year you do it right, and the third year you're coasting and you had better move on to something else.

I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work.

I went right from wunderkind to washed up. Old. Been around too long. That's just the way I feel. That's my internal dialogue.

Throughout my 20s I spent a lot of time just playing and not really working, but fortunately for me I continued to get just enough work, and have a reason to wake up in the morning. I really empathize with some of my peers who had success in the early years then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.

I did MTV so long because it's been really hard to find a place that has been able to keep my interests where I can do more than one beat.

There are worse things than getting pigeonholed in Hollywood.

The lawyer must either learn to live more capaciously or be content to find himself continuously less trusted, more circumscribed, till he becomes hardly more important than a minor administrator, confined to a monotonous round of record and routine, without dignity, inspiration, or respect.

There is a time in every actor's life when he has to face the self-created hurdle after he starts getting bored of work and suddenly realises that he is left behind.