A Quote by Dominic Cooper

I think you grow up wanting to be a racing driver. Then it dawns on you that it's not going to happen. — © Dominic Cooper
I think you grow up wanting to be a racing driver. Then it dawns on you that it's not going to happen.
I didn't think I was ever going to be a Cup driver. When I was a kid, before I started racing in the Xfinity Series, I thought that I was never going to get a chance, and then, if I did, I wasn't going to run well enough to maintain that opportunity and keep progressing.
One of the things that really impressed me about Anna Karenina when I first read it was how Tolstoy sets you up to expect certain things to happen - and they don't. Everything is set up for you to think Anna is going to die in childbirth. She dreams it's going to happen, the doctor, Vronsky and Karenin think it's going to happen, and it's what should happen to an adulteress by the rules of a nineteenth-century novel. But then it doesn't happen. It's so fascinating to be left in that space, in a kind of free fall, where you have no idea what's going to happen.
By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, we are competing to win.
I think as a 20-year-old you expect life to always be easy. You get given a good hand and the chance to race in Formula One. You think the driver can make the difference, can make up for everything else within the team. But that is not the case. You are racing in such a competitive sport so that doesn't happen.
It's short-track racing. You're going to get that and it's going to happen. I don't know why everybody thought it was the end of the world when wrecks were going to happen. Like I said, with close-quarter racing like that it's going to get heated.
I didn't grow up wanting to play basketball. I grew up wanting to enlist and then go into law enforcement.
I don't think anyone should grow up wanting to go around killing people. I don't think anyone should grow up wanting to be a secret agent.
By being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, we are competing to win. And the main motivation to all of us is to compete for victory, it's not to come 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th. I race to win as long as I feel it's possible. Sometimes you get it wrong? Sure, it's impossible to get it right all the time. But I race designed to win, as long as I feel I'm doing it right.
Was I always going to be here? No I was not. I was going to be homeless at one time, a taxi driver, truck driver, or any kind of job that would get me a crust of bread. You never know what's going to happen.
The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.
I don't think that American drivers going to NASCAR are taking the easy way out because as I said, the racing is amazing; it's just that it's easier to adapt to what you grow up with. American drivers grow up with NASCAR, they know NASCAR, and that's where they want to go.
Especially with sports cars, when you have got so many cars on the track with various degrees of competitiveness, then something will happen. It's the nature of racing, the law of averages. If you want to be a front-runner then you are going to have to push very hard, and collisions can happen.
I think every driver wants to make an impact in racing at any division they run on the way up.
And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that was always the goal - to be a novelist, not a screenwriter. And I think, again, if I didn't have the novels, maybe I'd be much more frustrated by not having directed yet.
But I was so wrapped up in sports growing up as a kid, that I think I was going to grow to be a pro ball player. But I found out real quick that was not going to happen.
I mean, when I was growing up, my family was always into racing. So, we'd always have the TV on on Sundays watching the Cup races or whatever, and ultimately I kinda thought about wanting to become a race car driver. I thought it would be cool to get paid to do what you love to do most.
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