Top 100 Day Job Quotes
#1. I'm lucky enough to say my day job is acting. I cut my teeth as a theater actor and playwright in New York.
Christopher Denham
#2. At certain point, you realize it's easy to play music for the rest of your life: just don't sell your guitar. Maybe you get a day job, but as long as you have a guitar, you can play.
Travis Morrison
#3. I've been crazy lucky that I've never had a day job. I get really close to having no money, then I always wind up getting some kind of great job.
Emily Meade
#4. I'm a journalist - I'm not Robert Caro. I have a day job, and a pretty consuming one - a joyfully consuming one.
David Remnick
#5. Few academics and high school history teachers want to risk their careers by suggesting to their students that the father of their country worked the same day job as Donald Trump. Washington was a land developer, often described as the richest of his generation.
Rinker Buck
#6. What I read: while I'm writing, I tend to go off reading fiction for relaxation - especially the challenging stuff. It's too much like the day job.
Charles Stross
#7. You don't get rich off your day job, you get rich off your homework.
Daymond John
#8. To me, success was not having to have a boss and not having a day job. I've been living my own version of success since the early '90s when I first got signed. I haven't had a job since then.
Juliana Hatfield
#9. I get approached to do a lot of commissioned art. Sometimes I do it, but I usually don't, given the day job and everything I've sort of got going on. I'm really passionate about it; there's not that much time left over for the other commissioned projects.
Tim Fish
#10. In my day job, I worry non-stop about making wise investments for long-term gains.
J. B. Pritzker
#11. It was important for me as a theater artist to allow myself and my interests to evolve over time and allow my notion of what success meant to evolve over time. I've always had a day job and never been just acting. But it didn't make me feel like I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
Allison Tolman
#12. I'm in a great place because I trust people behind the camera as I go off, and I still go back to my day job and do film.
Lee Daniels
#13. If they respect the craft and what we're doing and they bring something to the table and they work hard, I don't care what you do as your side job or as your day job.
Anthony Anderson
#14. I won't quit my day job. I like restaurants. I don't do a lot of television, either, even though people come to me with projects all the time. I have to spend time in the kitchen.
Wolfgang Puck
#15. When I first quit my day job, I was terrified. I called my editors and said I'm trying to make a go of this, and they threw every contract at me they could. And for two years, I had a book or an anthology out every month.
MaryJanice Davidson
#16. It is better to do what you love for work, but if it is your day job that enables an unpaid passion, then your life is still sweeter. What is important is that you make time for your dreams, not whether or not you get paid for it.
Tara Moss
#18. If writing is your passion, write and don't let anyone else convince you otherwise. You don't need to quit your day job to do it. Create a realistic schedule and stick with it.
Bindu
#19. As soon as I got into music, I tried to be a working, real artist who gets paid for what he does, who doesn't have a day job.
Frank Black
#20. A band's first album's usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.
John Darnielle
#21. The trick is to find a day job that pays decently, doesn't make you want to vomit, and leaves you with enough energy to make things in your spare time. Good day jobs aren't necessarily easy to find, but they're out there.
Austin Kleon
#22. I have a day job, which means my family isn't dependent on the writing income. So if I have an idea I like, I write it.
Jim C. Hines
#23. I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.
Dorothy Allison
#24. I hope we find evidence of dark matter in the lab and in outer space. This would go a long way to proving the correctness of string theory, which is what I do for a living. That is my day job. So string theory is a potentially experimentally verifiable theory.
Michio Kaku
#25. Working as a model liberated me from ever having to hold a day job. I transitioned from doing that to working full-time as an artist. If you're 19 and living cheap, being an artist model can sustain you.
Molly Crabapple
#26. In entrepreneurship, you decide to give up your day job at the point where either (A) the hobby/new business is at least making some form of ends meet, or (B) you feel that you need to dedicate yourself for a certain amount of time to it and give yourself the last hoorah.
Daymond John
#27. My advice for writers is to get a good day job. It takes the pressure off writing if you have a job that pays the bills.
Abraham Verghese
#28. I think I started lip-synching about halfway through the first day, and it's not as easy as you think it would be. But it's definitely better than a day job.
Bo Bice
#29. When I was growing up in comedy, there were maybe 10 comics in the whole country. Everyone had a day job. You worked free for years in little clubs, then you got your big break and became a star.
Elayne Boosler
#30. I couldn't imagine a more unreliable, more unprofitable way to make a living than writing. My advice? Show up, do the best you can. Keep your day job. If you get a lucky break, don't f*** up. It was helpful to be older because I had made all the really stupid mistakes already.
Anthony Bourdain
#31. I'm the producer of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," so I definitely have an exciting day job.
Josh Lieb
#32. I assisted with Russ [Manning] for about eleven months and my day job for 5 days a week was credit manager and paint salesman for Sherwin-Williams.
Mike Royer
#33. Up until 1995, I still had a day job that I hated. I was still personally involved in things in the 90s.
Ted Rall
#34. Can I just tell you the truth? I get asked to do a lot of stuff. And all of the years that people have asked me to do things for the film festival, I couldn't. And so this year, I thought, "Oh, my god, I don't have a day job. If somebody ask me to do something, I'm going to do it."
Oprah Winfrey
#35. Reporting is pretty vital to me. It keeps me connected to the world. A 40-hour-per-week day job may be less feasible as time goes on.
Laura Lippman
#36. I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.
David O. Russell
#37. Having a day job again I found really kind of fueled my fiction, because it became almost this forbidden thing where I had to sneak off and do it in private.
Jennifer Weiner
#38. I had just turned 28 and sold my first book, a travel guide for vegetarians, but I'd tell people about the day job that I didn't care about instead - I placed banner advertisements on the web for a search engine company.
James Bernard Frost
#39. Quitting a job doesn't jump-start a dream because dreams take planning, purpose, and progress to succeed. That stuff has to happen before you quit your day job.
Jon Acuff
#40. Most people like me are having a tough time. But it's fine. I don't really think about it as a career. I don't need to have a million bucks, but it keeps me in music and without a day job, so it's working out fine.
Freedy Johnston
#41. Thanks, Baba. You are always such a comfort."
She gave him a wry look. "I know. I've been considering becoming a counselor. Or possibly a nurse."
Day shook his head. "If I were you, Baba Yaga, I'd stick to your day job.
Deborah Blake
#42. My day job is writing for television. So I've been on enough sets, and I know how things work.
Tom Scharpling
#43. My day job is acting - I wouldn't direct something if I didn't feel passionate about it.
Jake M. Johnson
#44. I've always had a day job and never been just acting.
Allison Tolman
#45. I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job.
Poppy Z. Brite
#46. When you're single again, at the beginning you're very optimistic and you say, 'I want to meet someone who's really smart, really sweet, really sensitive.' And six months later you're like, 'Lord, any mammal with a day job.
Carol Leifer
#47. I am very lucky that I get to go to work and laugh all day for my day job, and then go home and torture my artistic self.
Reid Scott
#48. Any pitcher who might throw at me should know I'm not giving up my day job or trying to get anyone else's job. I just can't think of anything cooler than being one of the boys of summer!
Garth Brooks
#49. When it comes to the acting stuff, I like to show up for a couple days and kind of be outrageous and silly, and go back to my day job.
Josh Groban
#51. Real estate is my life. It is my day job, if you will. But it consumes my nights and weekends, too.
Ivanka Trump
#52. I review books as a day job, and through the years I've come to view the contemporary memoir as, almost always, a saga of victimization, sometimes by others, sometimes by the self, and sometimes by illness or misfortune, leading, like clockwork, to healing and redemption.
Walter Kirn
#53. Lest it sound as if I resent my day job, I have to say that my day job is the reason I write, and it has been the best thing for me as a writer.
Abraham Verghese
#54. Don't quit your day job, but write like you will!
Rebel Miller
#55. Some people are night people. Some people are day people. I could only work a day job.
Chuck Palahniuk
#57. I'm a better mother if I'm also doing my work. Some women find a lot more satisfaction from doing the hardest job, which is being a mom. But I like my day job, so I juggle a lot.
Katey Sagal
#58. I write by stealing time. The hours in the day have never felt as if they belonged to me. The greatest number has belonged to my day job as a physician and professor of medicine - eight to 12 hours, and even more in the early days.
Abraham Verghese
#59. I need to feel like the work I'm doing is not necessarily important, but meaningful, at least to me, because otherwise it just becomes a day job. It just becomes factory work and I get really frustrated.
Alan Ball
#60. I like acting and being a musician. It's like comparing apples and oranges. But I really like my day job. I've always played music since I was 12, and I guess I always will.
Dennis Quaid
#61. Every time I hear about somebody who wins a never-work-again sum in the lottery but keeps his or her day job I think, not a book person.
Amy Smith
#62. I recommend everyone who DJ's to do it as a hobby and make sure you have a day job or are going to school. Only 100 DJ's in the world make a living doing this, by that I mean making a good, comfortable living.
Armin Van Buuren
#63. I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing!
Lydia Davis
#64. Listen, my day job is also Chief Creative Officer for Marvel, and it's a very painful job because we publish a lot of books, and there are things I see where I can punch people out. Therefore, we have some new people now, and the kids are going to read our books.
Avi Arad
#65. My life is not separate from my music, you know? It's not like a day job that I leave and go home. It's who I am as a person and how I am trying to grow, come closer to God, be a better person.
Matisyahu
#66. I still read scripts, and if something great comes along, that's great ... but this is my day job. The Row is where I go every day.
Mary-Kate Olsen
#67. My parents always taught me that my day job would never make me rich; it'd be my homework.
Daymond John
#68. If there's anything better than a God-given talent, it's a God-given day job.
Robert Breault
#69. I have a day job Monday to Friday. I work at a record label in Brooklyn called Ba Da Bing. It's a great indie label and I listen to music all day. I meet people online and find out about the cool new music blogs.
Sharon Van Etten
#70. All musicians need a day job in the beginning. Unless they still live with their parents, I guess. I'm just lucky that my day job is simply another form of art.
Hal Sparks
#71. It really is a day job, and it also seems to have virtually disappeared-with no remorse, really. It gives me more time to paint.
Martin Mull
#72. I started eBay as an experiment, as a side hobby basically, while I had my day job.
Pierre Omidyar
#73. The guys have told me not to quit my day job.
Garth Brooks
#74. A lot of people these days are too ambitious; their sights are set too high at the start and they end up diving in too deep, quitting their day job too soon. They move to Vegas or wherever, make an all-or-nothing commitment before they're ready, and burn out.
Phil Ivey
#75. I call 'Community' the best day job in the world, because between takes, I get to write music. I get to write sketches. I get to write movies. It's the best job ever.
Donald Glover
#77. People are irrational. What I want to do is let's take the irrational aspects out of it and let's just break this down. And you and I, let's go and see if we can't master this thing, a few steps at a time without giving up your day job, without having to give up your whole life.
Tony Robbins
#78. I always liked movies, so I started writing for Hollywood, but my day job was physics.
Leonard Mlodinow
#79. I loved publishing; I loved working in the book industry, but I've been writing pretty much nonstop since I was 19. I realized very early on that I would need a day job, and I wanted one that was in books.
Garth Nix
#80. Being a junkie, when you broke it down, was nothing more than a crazed day job.
Jerry Stahl
#81. Being a novelist is hard for anyone - male or female. You don't get to quit your day job.
Jennifer Weiner
#82. Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.
Harlan Ellison
#83. There's nothing more frightening than a day job.
Jay Leno
#84. I needed a day job that required me mostly to use my mind and hands, because my heart and soul belonged to my dreams.
James Grady
#85. Starting a business on the side while keeping your day job can provide all the cash flow you need.
Jason Fried
#86. If I can be a working actor, if I can be an actor and not have a day job, I'll be fine.
Colin Hanks
#87. I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a 'philosopher' simply do not have a day job to go to.
Kevin Warwick
#88. I had a bike as a kid, and when I worked in Manhattan - I had a 10-speed - I rode from downtown to 68th and Madison for my day job. I knew about fighting traffic, but nothing about racing.
Dennis Christopher
#89. I have a day job that's very odd. Most people, by the time they're 25, glom onto one kind of music and that's what they listen to for the rest of their lives.
Joseph M. Kahn
#90. I don't write because I want to write. I do it because I have to. I just wish it was my day job.
Stephanie Michel
#91. Oh my God. For most of eternity, I won't exist. That leaves two options: live forever or destroy the universe. Hm... I may have to quit my day job for this.
Zach Weinersmith
#92. I don't have a day job, so I read any time of day.
Ned Beauman
#93. Never give up your day job. I do all sorts of things, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to 'The Today Show,' and I love doing this thing, and they will have to blow me out of here with dynamite before I leave.
Al Roker
#94. My best advice for
you, honey, is to stop if you possibly can! And if you just can't, then get ready to work
like hell. Hang onto your day job. And remember, you may not make a living, but you'll
make a wonderful life.
Doris Betts
#95. She works on her never-ending project for hours at a time. In art school they talked about day jobs in tones of horror. She never would have imagined that her day job would be the calmest and least cluttered part of her life.
Emily St. John Mandel
#96. In 13 years of doing my day job, I've learned a few things about motivating people. It's about setting a vision and, as long as everyone knows why they're doing what they're doing, you achieve that vision.
Natalie Massenet
#97. I'm in a rock band - I don't have a day job! I am spoiled ... a lot.
Stone Gossard
#98. Thinking about work as a day job has made a big difference in the way I approach what I do. It also helped me not to confuse who I am with what I do.
Bob Goff
#99. When I received my first paycheck from my now known day job, I spent it on a period Craftsman chair and a Frank Lloyd Wright-wannabe lamp. With my second paycheck, I bought a stereo.
Brad Pitt
#100. I have a day job. I can make movies when I want to.
Warren Beatty
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