Starting Out Quotes

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music ... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem. ~ Demetri Martin

I've learned that asking ourselves not just what we want to be, but who we want to be is important at every stage of our lives, not just when we're starting out in the world. That's because in a way, we're starting out fresh in the world every single day. ~ Maria Shriver

I was just starting out, trying to become a screenwriter, and I became the Austin slam champion three times. For a nerdy, kind of a socially awkward guy, that did wonders for my self esteem. ~ Ernest Cline

I was there less than a year before I was assigned to the Paris bureau. I spent two years there and, in fact, before I even went on the staff I was sent to Europe to do assignments which they wouldn't normally do for a young photographer just starting out. ~ Gordon Parks

Everyone has to suffer the gimmicks and other stunts and machinations when they're starting out - only at the time, it doesn't feel like suffering; it's fun and different then. But a little fame goes a long way, and then one tries to cast off part of the heavy burden - a burden one can never totally escape. ~ George Harrison

When I was starting out, I didn't know what the hell I was doing and my person who was helping me out, I didn't even have an agent, got me five or six big auditions for leads in movies in 1986 that I had no business auditioning for. I think I ran out of three of them before I'd even finished. ~ John Corbett

When I was first starting out as a kid, I tried to pad my resume with everything I had ever done - ice-skate, carry a tune. I can't dance for my life, but I can learn, so I'll tell people I can dance. I play the piano - I'm a really good pianist, actually. ~ Alexandra Daddario

When you're starting out as an actor, there isn't much food around. I was lucky to have a hit pretty early on. I didn't starve too long. ~ Steve Guttenberg

The most important thing when starting out with essay writing is to find a voice with which you're comfortable. You need to find a persona that is very much like you, but slightly caricatured. ~ Anne Fadiman

I always think of young Hollywood as its own little high school. There are the girls who have been working for a while that are kind of like the Queen Bees and the new kids at 'school' just starting out. ~ Nicole Gale Anderson

The best piece of advice I ever received about being a writer came from my brother Lee. I was just starting out and he told me that if I wanted to have a long career, I had to be versatile, that I shouldn't just think of myself in one way, because there would come a time when maybe that one thing wasn't working out for me - and I'd still want to earn a living as a writer. ~ Tod Goldberg

To establish yourself as an actress, you have to become well known. A girl just starting out, I would tell her to concentrate on acting, but she doesn't have to go around wearing blankets. ~ Jayne Mansfield

When I was starting out, William Goldman took me under his wing, and he's still the person I show pages to. ~ Aaron Sorkin

It gets super dark. I did a bunch of intense indie movies when I was starting out in my career and I was always in a bad mood because, when you're dealing with the subject matter of losing your baby, getting raped and all that stuff, it's not fun to go through. You really have to go there. ~ Busy Philipps

Youth, if adults will only admit that it has any brains at all, will stand out, today, in a most promising light. Philosophically, Youth is Wisdom in formation, and with many thoughts startling to adult minds; and, industrially, this vast World's coming stability is now, today, in its bands; growing slowly, as a blossom grows from its bud. If you will furnish him with a thorough schooling, you can plank down your dollar that Youth, starting out from this miraculous day, will not lag nor shirk on that coming day in which old joints, rusty and crackling, must slow down; and, calling for an oil can, you will find that Youth only, is that lubrication which can run Tomorrow's World. ~ Ernest Vincent Wright

I am used to wearing corsets. Even when I was first starting out it was either Shakespeare or Chekov. Everything that I was doing involved corsets. I guess I am just not destined to breathe that deeply. ~ Kate Beckinsale

I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today. ~ Carol Burnett

We're at the opening of the Globe." She thought back to Daniel's words under the peach trees at Sword & Cross. "Daniel told me we were here."
"Sure,you were here," Bill said. "About fourteen years ago.Perched on your older brother's shoulder. You came with your family to see Julius Caesar."
Bill hovered in the air a foot in front of her. It was unappetizing, but the high collar around her neck actually seemed to hold its shape. She almost resembled the sumptuously dressed women in the higher boxes.
"And Daniel?" she asked.
"Daniel was a player-"
"Hey!"
"That's whay they called the actors." Bill rolled his eyes. "He was just starting out then. To everyone else in the audience, his debut was utterly forgettable. But to little three-year-old Lucinda"-Bill shrugged-"it put the fire in you. You've been quote-unquote dying to get onstage ever since.Tonight's your night."
"I'm an actor? ~ Lauren Kate

Everything about starting out in comedy is pride-swallowing, from handing out fliers to bombing in front of audiences. ~ Mike Birbiglia

On a good night, I'm just into the flow and seeing the pictures and words in my mind clearly before I say them. On a bad night, which to be honest are nowhere near as bad as when I was starting out, I just concentrate on performing the routines correctly. I focus on my delivery. ~ Franklyn Ajaye

The only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they're unique. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come. ~ Greer Garson

We're so used to it that we don't think twice about it. For somebody who's starting out in ice hockey it would be heavy, but it's protection. It's everything you need so you do have to get used to it. ~ Gerad Adams

If I had any advice for my 16-year-old self, it would just be to stay strong, because acting is not an easy lifestyle, especially when you are starting out. That being said, it definitely makes it all worth it when it does happen. ~ Melissa Benoist

Here's what I didn't know when I was starting out that I now know ... I thought when you were starting out it was really hard to write because you hadn't broken in yet, you hadn't really hit your stride yet. What I found out paradoxically is that the next script you write doesn't get easier because you wrote one before ... each one gets harder by a factor of 10. ~ Shane Black

She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I wouldn't be where I am without these Funny or Die videos in general. When I was first starting out, I would take roles just to get the experience, but not exactly because I believed in the projects I was doing. ~ Dave Franco

When I was starting out, I always wanted to be able to do everything - comedy and drama and action, and everything in between. Film is so diverse, and it's fun to be able to take advantage of all of it. ~ Olivia Thirlby

It was more freedom than I think most people get when they're starting out - or even when they're not starting out. He [John Cassavetes] did his thing and I did whatever I thought. ~ Gena Rowlands

I can't picture myself starting out aiming to do anything or having much of an agenda.I think in writing a poem, I'm making some tonal adjustments, and it took me a long time to allow anything like fun into my poetry. ~ Billy Collins

Usually form seems to find me in the process of writing a poem, though I have nothing against starting out with the form. ~ Matthea Harvey

I remember when I was first starting out in the late 50's, and everybody at that time said rock 'n roll was gonna die. I was 15 years old when I started, and I certainly didn't believe that was true. I thought anything that feels this good and makes me want to tap my foot like this can't be a passing fad like everybody says. Of course, they were wrong, and here we are in the 90's and it's alive and well, and getting programmed all over the country, and really all over the world. So it's been a great journey. ~ Bobby Vee

I loved 'Truly Madly Deeply' and all those 1990s romcoms because you had great actresses like Juliet Stevenson and Emma Thompson starting out. ~ Helen George

If you had told me when I was starting out that I would be coming down to Nashville, kind of weaving in and out of the country scene, I never would've thought that in a million years. ~ Kid Rock

When I was starting out, being a young entrepreneur was not fashionable. Parents would ask, 'When are you going to get a real job?' ~ Kevin Harrington

I was never strategic really, but back when I was starting out no one cared. In the acting community, box office didn't matter. I really think it was a mistake when they started paying people like $20 million to do a movie because now it's all people think about. Is she worth it? Is he worth it? ~ Winona Ryder

It's one thing if you are a luxury brand and have been around for 60 years and can weather the retail storm we've had, but if you are a new brand that's just starting out - whether you are a writer or a retailer - innovating through social media is crucial. Those that are hidden and guarded will not progress. ~ Kelly Cutrone

When I was starting out and had to cut my teeth and build my resume to get in, I had to basically work for free on a lot of things. ~ Dana Brunetti

I worked more intensively hour after hour when I was starting out [writing]. More laboriously. I'd say quantity is important as well as quality, and if you're not producing enough, make a schedule and stick to it. ~ Lydia Davis

But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself: 'Is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end was hard work and self-denial? ~ Terry Pratchett

When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don't want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn't just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know - if we know anything at all - is how to write the book we're writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won't succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt - spectacularly, brazenly - into the unknown. ~ Dani Shapiro

I did a movie called 'Clueless' when I was first starting out. And with that paycheck, I went and bought a car, which I had no use for, because I lived in New York City, where you can take a train for a dollar anywhere. But instead, I bought a $20,000 car with a $12,000 check. ~ Donald Faison

At one point when I was very young, when I was first starting out, I thought, 'Well, one day I'll be able to put all the music away and become a real comedian.' But then I realized there are amazing musical comedians out there, that musical comedy is probably something I'll always want to pursue. ~ Bo Burnham

A relationship starting out as one that awakens love can only remain a living vehicle for love to the extent that it is continually made new or reconsecrated. ~ Ram Dass

Help each user personally. Sure that won't scale to a very large size, but when a startup is just starting out, it really helps you have an advantage as a small and nimble company. ~ John Collison

Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed:
1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer;
2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind. ~ Eric Hoffer

In a sense, the farmer was the looniest speculator in a nation overrun with them. He was wagering he would master this fathomlessly intricate global game, pay off his many debts, and come out with enough extra to play another round. On top of that, he was betting on the kindness of Mother Nature, always supremely risky. But the farmer had no choice if he hoped to sustain himself and a way of life, the family farm. Instead, he was drawn into a kind of social suicide. The family farm and the whole network of small-town life that it patronized were being washed away into the rivers of capital and credit that flowed toward the railroads, banks, and commodity exchanges, toward the granaries, wholesalers, and numerous other intermediaries that stood between the farmer and the world market. Disappearing into all the reservoirs of capital accumulation, the family farm increasingly remained a privileged way of life only in sentimental memory.

Perversely the dynamic Lincoln had described as the pathway out of dependency - spending a few years earning wages, saving up, buying a competency, and finally hiring others - now operated in reverse. Starting out as independent farmers, families then slipped inexorably downward, first mortgaging the homestead, then failing under intense pressure to support that mortgage (they called themselves "mortgage slaves") and falling into tenancy - or into sharecropping if in the South - and finally ending where Lincoln's story began, as dispos ~ Steve Fraser

Her granny was asleep and Mary knew it was special, this trip. It was something that hadn't been planned. It was actually impossible. Four generations of women
"I'm a woman," Mary said to herself
heading off on a journey in a car. One of them dead, one of them dying, one of them driving, one of them just starting out. ~ Roddy Doyle

I've been compared to people since the beginning. When you're starting out, you need a comparison so people will understand you right away. ~ Jason Mraz

After 34 years, I feel like I did when I was starting out. I feel excited and feel I've never been better doing what I do. ~ Louie Anderson

When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books. ~ Elizabeth Moon

For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes. ~ Charles Stross

When you're starting out as an actor, you keep raising the stakes. First, you just want to be a character who comes on stage and gets a laugh or two and exits. Just five minutes on a stage, not even Broadway. But every time you say your little prayer at night, you place more demands. ~ Charles Kimbrough

When I was first starting out in the music industry, I was always coupled in the same sentence with Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera - and I was probably the worst of them. I think a lot of people back then thought, 'Mandy Moore ... she'll probably go back to where she came from in a year.' ~ Mandy Moore

I think, when I was a young lawyer starting out, I was so determined to prove that I was as good as the men and that I could be given the same opportunities as the men, and it wouldn't make any difference at all that I was a woman. But actually, looking back on it now, I did do things that I wouldn't recommend to other women at all. ~ Cherie Blair

My main goal, starting out as a young actor, was to carry the reins that Pac left off and to reach the depths as an actor that I know he would have reached had he still been here with us. ~ Michael K. Williams

I'm not as I was but at this present moment I have to say, I feel very envious of someone who's young and active and starting out in the argument. Just think of the extraordinary things that are waiting to be known ~ Christopher Hitchens

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through. ~ Ira Glass

I feel there has to be a certain amount of improvisation as I'm writing, which means any idea or any commitment to a project is risky. It involves time; it involves gathering of material, and sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes it does. As I'm starting out on a project, I can't tell if it will click or not. ~ Joanna Scott

I think when we were starting out, it was more about imitating our songwriting heroes. We would try to write songs like Neil Finn, or we would try to write songs like Ray Davies, or we would try to write songs like Glenn Tilbrook. ~ Adam Schlesinger

I know that starting out as a young band, it's really easy to get lost with bands that sound the same or with the plethora of music that's out there. ~ Kellin Quinn

Starting out, I remember being on the same bill with other bands, and I always thought they were so much better because they were rehearsed and had all their moves down and they sounded really tight. ~ Alexis Taylor

I tried to be just a singer of standards when I was starting out. And there was nothing special enough about my voice to make it that far. So I feel a bit like Rod Stewart. Once you've had that rock career, people will give you that chance where otherwise they might not. ~ Nellie McKay

I think... that love encompasses the experience of the possible transition from the pure randomness of chance to a state that has universal value. Starting out from something that is simply an encounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of difference and not only in terms of identity. And you can even be tested and suffer in the process. In today's world, it is generally thought that individuals only pursue their self-interest. Love is an antidote to that. Provided it isn't conceived only as an exchange of mutual favours, or isn't calculated way in advance as a profitable investment, love really is a unique trust placed in chance. It takes us into key areas of the experience of what is difference and, essentially, leads to the idea that you can experience the world from the perspective of difference. In this respect it has universal implications: it is an individual experience of potential universality, and is thus central to philosophy, as Plato was the first to intuit. ~ Alain Badiou

The most formidable people in the world, and now the most dangerous, people who ... lay down the doctrine that every frontier must be the starting out point for invasion. ~ Winston Churchill

When starting out, don't worry about not having enough money. Limited funds are a blessing, not a curse. Nothing encourages creative thinking in quite the same way. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Getting your foot in the door with some publishing people can be important when you're starting out as a writer, but it's also not enough to get you where you need to be. ~ Chad Harbach

When I was starting out, I followed along the path that seemed to be marked out for me - from high school to college to law school to professional life. ~ Peter Thiel

The key, I would say to any fledgling humorist starting out, is to make sure that sloppiness is part of your recipe. That way they come to expect fumbling and clumsiness and they say, "Oh, it must be a charming part of his personality." ~ Nick Offerman

Starting out in Kid's Cove, Mangle is mostly endoskeleton, as his suit is in pretty rough shape. He does have a pink bowtie. Mangle will lunge at you from the ceiling, so keep an eye out for him! Balloon ~ Hayley May

Don't ever underestimate the power of mentoring someone, or helping some young actor, doing a favor for them, or introducing- everyone needs somebody to help them along when they're first starting out. ~ Allison Janney

When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous. ~ James Franco

When you're starting out, every line in a show or a commercial is like a huge success. ~ Emmanuelle Chriqui

I considered moving to New York or Los Angeles, but they're two of the hardest places to move to when you're just starting out in a band. ~ Dave Keuning

I think with all records, it's the starting out that is the difficult stage. ~ Alison Moyet

Young people who are just starting out somehow need to let you know they know how to sing. ~ Barbara Cook

...I'd be interested in any tips you have for somebody starting out."

"Uh-huh," I said, looking out the window. I decided, as we drove up the dark, winding streets of Harry's neighborhood, that if Nick asked me again, after we got to the airport, I was going to tell him that it's mostly luck.

And that you have to be willing to deny your heritage, to commodify your body, to lie to good people, to sacrifice who you love in the name of what people will think, and to choose the false version of yourself time and time again, until you forget who you started out as or why you started doing it to begin with. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

You have 'listeners' ears' when you're just starting out, and your 'listeners' ears' tell you what will work. You lose those ears later, when you break songs down into production elements too much. ~ Gene Pitney

To me the biggest waste of time is commuting. First, there is no place that is less than a two-hour commute from New York. You can be half a mile outside of the city limits; you're two hours away by car. I don't care how close they tell you it is. "Oh, it's only thirty miles." Thirty miles? At 8:30 in the morning, thirty miles outside New York, you might as well be starting out in Omaha. ~ Fran Lebowitz

Instead, my biggest piece of advice to anyone just starting out, or to anyone who feels like they are taking a wrong turn along the way, is this. Find something you want to do and learn how to do it really well. Take what you got and make the most of it. Learn how to do something, whatever it is, you would choose to do for nothing. Whatever it is, when you are doing it, it makes you feel amazing and most yourself. Throw yourself into it. Challenge yourself to be the best you can be. We can't all be famous actors. But, if you can find something you love and if that something will also pay the bills, you will be on your way to your own personal paradise. ~ Michael Caine

When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer. ~ Francesca Annis

I'm just another guy starting out. ~ Tim Tebow

For you in the West to hear the phrase 'All men are created equal' is to draw a yawn. For us, it's a miracle. We're starting out at rock bottom, man. But South Africa does have soul. ~ Athol Fugard

I was fortunate that when I was first starting out in New Orleans, I had a remarkable high-school teacher. And she was a great, great influence in my life, and I think she gave me the courage and the confidence to go forward into the real world. She instilled in me that my dreams were important and that what I was passionate about was most important. ~ John Cena

I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually. ~ Chiwetel Ejiofor

We are used to things starting out small and simple and then progressing--evolving--to become ever more complex and sophisticated, so this is naturally what we expect to find on archaeological sites. It upsets our carefully structured ideas of how civilizations should behave, how they should mature and develop, when we are confronted by a case like Göbekli Tepe that starts out perfect at the beginning and then slowly devolves until it is just a pale shadow of its former self. ~ Graham Hancock

To be a good artist / letterer / designer / guitar player it takes practice. A lot of it. More than you can even fathom when you're starting out. ~ Jessica Hische

There are two ways to look at my publishing career. One is that I'm a novelist churning out books, who is eight into a series; the other way is that I'm a cartoonist, just starting out. Most cartoonists have long careers: Charles Schulz drew Peanuts for 50 years. ~ Jeff Kinney

I was starting out in the business, there was only one path to playing professionally - graduate, or go four years. With the creation of the ABA [American Basketball Association] in the early 1970s, the sanctity of having to go to college was broken. The ABA took anyone, starting with Spencer Haywood. ~ Sonny Vaccaro

My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Creative people, especially those who are just starting out, feel that they have to conform and be a mass-produced product in order to be noticed. The truth of the matter is that genuineness and unconventionality is often what helps make a mark on the world. ~ Veronika Carnaby

Sometimes when you're starting out with acting, you have to take what you can get to get experience and meet people. ~ Emily Kinney

When I was just starting out in the business, I used to love to watch Lorne Greene doing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I said right then, 'That's what I want to do someday,' and it's been one dream that has come true. ~ Willard Scott

Starting out in a beginner class and really understanding the fundamentals of yoga is really important. ~ Mariel Hemingway

When I began writing in the mid-1960s, I thought it was not important for readers to know whether I was male or female. Also, I was a great admirer of E.B. White, so I may have thought that it would bring me luck to submit my first manuscript as 'E.L.' But if I were starting out today, I would use my first name. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

I told myself that in the country of my birth, from which I was disengaged in an increasingly irreversible way, there undoubtedly were many men and women like him, basically decent people who had dreamed all their lives of the economic, social, cultural, and political progress that would transform Peru into a modern, prosperous, democratic society with opportunities open to all, only to find themselves repeatedly frustrated, and, like Uncle Ataulfo, had reached old age - the very brink of death - bewildered, asking themselves why we were moving backward instead of advancing and were worse off now with more discrimination, inequality, violence, and insecurity than when they were starting out ~ Edith Grossman

A lot of young people just starting out unskilled, as all Americans do when they're born here, come to this country, and so the business community is for immigration. Big businesses, small businesses, high-tech, low-tech, the communities of faith, and the Republican leadership. ~ Grover Norquist

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, 'I release the need for this in my life'. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

When you're just starting out, and someone you think is a real storyteller says something good about you, that helps. ~ John Hawkes

Have you ever actually listened to golfers talking to each other? "Looked good starting out ... " "Better direction than last time ... " "Who's away? ... " It sounds like visitors' day at a home for the criminally insane. ~ Peter Andrews