As an actor I am always waiting for my luck to run out.
Tom HanksRead
I love what I do for a living, it's the greatest job in the world, but you have to survive an awful lot of attention that you don't truly deserve and you have to live up to your professional responsibilities and I'm always trying to balance that with what is really important.
Interpretation
Doing what you love can bring immense joy, but it also comes with pressures and responsibilities.
In this quote, Tom Hanks reflects on the dual nature of pursuing a passionate career. While he expresses great love for his profession and acknowledges it as a fulfilling 'job in the world', he also highlights the burdens of public scrutiny and the need to meet professional expectations. This balance between personal fulfillment and external pressures is a common challenge faced by many who seek success in their fields.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing passions in one's career.
As an actor I am always waiting for my luck to run out.
Even the simplest choice can make a jaw-dropping difference in our world.
My kid could get a bad X-ray and I could get a call from the doctor saying I have something growing in my bum and that would change my perspective on everything instantaneously, on what is and what is not important.
Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?
I think it's better to feel good than to look good.
If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.
My uncle was the first brown person to have a market stall on Petticoat Lane in the 1960s. He worked his way up from the street. He was homeless, but eventually he got a car so he could sell from the boot. And by the 1980s, he was a millionaire wholesaling to companies like Topshop. So in a way, fashion put me in England.
Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.
If you want your company to succeed, you have to have the confidence in your business to take a bet on its future - to risk destroying a mediocre business model for the chance to have a strong one.
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
I just wanted to play tennis. It wasn't a job. It was an ambition. I knew I could make money at it. I was 18 - old enough to think I could do it, young enough not to consider the consequences.
No man is more than another unless he does more than another.
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