Unpredictable Income Quotes

The worst thing about being a freelance film director is that you're scrambling around Soho with a briefcase, looking for somewhere to make phone calls. That was my position for 10 years.

I've moved laterally, as opposed to vertically. I was never a superstar. I've always had to move between a couple of years of unemployment, where offers are not provocative enough to take, and seasons where I work nonstop for a year.

I used to tell my mother, 'I'm going to have to get a real job one day.' You keep saying this will end one day, but people still call us up and ask us to sing. It's truly amazing.

The condition of being an actress can be unbearable.

No wife can endure a gambling husband; unless he is a steady winner.

I grew up in a show-business family, but we were working-class show business. There was nothing glamorous about it. You had great things one day and the next day, nothing.

Honest truth is I didn't really know from year to year what people were making. I think that was the best perspective to have.

I was on 'Gilmore Girls' for seven years and had a couple decent years after that. Then, two years of almost nothing. I had jobs here and there, but I got very, very scared.

Acting is a career without a safety net, because it's not like a professional job where every year you hope to be promoted, and get a sense of career stability. There is never any stability in this business.

I've always had to move between a couple of years of unemployment, where offers are not provocative enough to take, and seasons where I work nonstop for a year. It's always been an erratic rhythm.

Sequestration will make it extremely challenging - and in many cases impossible - for employees to meet their mortgage payments, pay their healthcare expenses, plan for retirement, or help their children attend college. To be blunt, these families are at risk.

My husband changed jobs so fast that I simply never knew what business he was in.

It was funny to be an emcee, because you're so at the mercy of the club. You can show up for the weekend hoping to get the $400 - and get fired. I had to prank whoever they told me to prank.

It's a blessing and a curse. But it's not always the best situation to be in. As a profession, I don't recommend acting at all.

Being an entrepreneur is not a 9-to-5 job.

Session work is not a steady thing at all. You do eight of them in one week and then go three months without any. That's the way it really is.

Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah.

I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.

I like the writing life, but it's not something that always makes enough money.

You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jail house. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.

The life of an actor is very random. It can be exhilarating but terrifying - you do wonder day to day where the next job will come from. Some of my friends are very talented people, but you see them out of work - which can be tough. If you wanted that kind of security, though, I guess you wouldn't be an actor in the first place.

The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.

I have a weird life because I live on songwriting royalties, which are a strange income. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't.

American capitalism today offers us no assurances that our efforts will be rewarded by security, stability or enough income to let us live well or at least well enough… Contemporary capitalism turns all workers—laborers and managers alike—into economic junk. The days if a long career with one employer, once a key part of the American dream, are long gone for most workers.

Hollywood is strange in and of itself. People dress up and pretend to be other people, and you can either make millions of dollars, or no money. It's odd.