The glory of being a carrier pilot has certainly worn off.

You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.

I have often been asked what I think about at the moment of take-off. Of course, no pilot sits and feels his pulse as he flies. He has to be part of the machine. If he thinks of anything but the task in hand, then trouble is probably just around the corner.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

Any man who has had the job I’ve had and didn’t have a sense of humor wouldn’t still be here.

Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

When I left the University of Notre Dame, I honestly felt I would never coach again.

On a career level, I always advise people to look ahead and be open to changes in direction. That job that seems so good now can easily turn into a nightmare if you do not see the possible corners it can land you in.

When I’m getting to know someone, I look for someone who has passions that I respect, like his career. Someone who loves what he does is really attractive.

If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it’s cool that happens.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

I’m not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living.

My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I worked my heart out to get my degrees. But the minute I graduated, suddenly everyone was asking me, ‚Well, when are you going to get married and start having kids?‘ And the truth is I had no idea how I would balance the expected role of wife and mother with a challenging career.

In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

I loved what I did. I could’ve been secretary of state for ever.

I’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.

I worked for Xerox for 4 years and after that I knew I was never going to be a corporate person. It wasn’t my environment.

In any profession it gets to be a grind.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

I left school to concentrate on racing. It was a family decision between my mum, dad and myself.

I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.

Professional farmworkers who know how to do a number of different jobs, whether it be pruning or picking or crafting, they see themselves as professionals, and they take a lot of pride in that work. They don’t see themselves as doing work that is demeaning.

There’s something boring about people who have to go to an office for a living.

I’m a workin‘ girl.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

Today, we have private airline companies, but if you take a look at a Boeing plane next time you travel, you’ll see that you are basically taking a ride on a modified bomber.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

ESPN is a great organization to work for.

I’m in a rare position where I don’t have to do job after job. I can take time when my family needs it.

I now make my living by being impolite. I am clumsy at it.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

Becoming a writer is not a ‚career decision‘ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

I like to work.

As I followed my dream – stayed in-Spirit, that is, inspired – I made more money in the first year after I gave up my employment than I had made in the previous 35 years of my life.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.