Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Alan AldaRead
What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the desire for recognition in one's craft, whether it be acting or writing.
Alan Alda emphasizes the importance of being recognized for one's skills and dedication in specific creative pursuits. He highlights that his identity as an artist fluctuates between his roles as an actor and a writer, and he seeks validation and appreciation in each discipline separately.
Themes
ActorWriterRecognitionCraftIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
During an awards ceremony, one might quote this to highlight the importance of artistic recognition.
More from Alan Alda
All quotes βBegin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.
Alan AldaRead
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Alan AldaRead
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
Alan AldaRead
If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
Alan AldaRead
I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
Alan AldaRead
Similar quotes
You have a lifetime to learn technique. But I can teach you what is more important than technique, how to see; learn that and all you have to do afterwards is press the shutter.
Garry WinograndRead
If you want to be an actor, you must have total, ruthless commitment to your art. Don't be ambitious for fame or TV or movies. Art is a jealous mistress and will brook no competitors. Study all the time. Never stop reading. Never stop learning speeches. It will fill you up - define and refine you.
Steven BerkoffRead
Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.
Betty SmithRead
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you -- like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist -- or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
I hope there is something worthy in my writings and not merely the novelty of a black face associated with the power to rhyme that has attracted attention.
Paul Laurence DunbarRead
Everyone is not able, or inclined, to write poetry in the narrower sense any more than everyone is qualified to take part in a walking race. But just as all of us can and do walk, so all of us can and do use language poetically.
Louis MacneiceRead