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 →Begin 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
Believe me... I've made a career out of being the right thing in the wrong space and the wrong thing in the right space. That's one thing... I really do know about.
Andy WarholRead
That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.
Bob DylanRead
Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work.
Chuck CloseRead
I like ornament at the right time, but I don't want a poem to be made out of decoration ... When I read the poems that matter to me, it stuns me how much the presence of the heart-in all its forms-is endlessly available there. To experience ourselves in an important way just knocks me out. It puzzles me why people have given that up for cleverness. Some of them are ingenious, more ingenious than I am, but so many of them aren't any good at being alive.
Jack GilbertRead
People always say when they meet me that I'm not what they expect. I assume they think I'm this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.
The WeekndRead
I think every actor would wish there is some challenge that is left. I would consider to be creatively dead if I were to say that I am satisfied now.
Amitabh BachchanRead