A Quote by Joan Chen

It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.

Joan Chen

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About Accountant Anywhere Artist Based Beautifully Because Big Chance Easy Else First Get Life Matters May Might Moon Must Need Nothing Obsessed Obsessive Profession Rate Reading Second Second Rate Stay Survive Then Us Very Written

Quote Author

Joan Chen
Chinese - Actress
Born: April 26, 1961

If you go to a second-rate place, and you are first-rate, it is very difficult to do first-rate work because you do not get that critical feedback you need for first-rate work on a daily basis.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Somebody asked Somerset Maugham about his place in the pantheon of writers, and he said, "I'm in the very front row of the second rate." I'm sort of haunted by that.

Stephen King

I knew I'd always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, 'Well, I'd rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one'.

Sarah Waters

I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.

Witold Gombrowicz

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

Sarah Waters

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

Maurice Ravel

Once I do something, I need to be obsessed - or maybe I don't need to be obsessed, but I get obsessed because that's just the way my brain works - but I need to pay a lot of attention to detail. Because everything counts to me once I do something, even if it's a movie that nobody cares about. That's why I need to choose very well what I want to do. But in real life, when I watch TV or whatever, I guess I'm not that obsessive guy, and I'm pretty boring.

Rodrigo Cortes

Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.

Charles Caleb Colton

If you want to survive Ebola, you need to be young. If you're in your late 30s, the death rate is about 80 percent, and if you're over 45, then the death rate goes up to about 90 percent.

Richard Preston

I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.

John Updike

The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.

Willa Cather

There is no room in music for the second-rate - it might just as well be the nineteenth-rate.

Gustav Holst

But I think that sometimes, when one's behaved like a rather second-rate person, the way I did at breakfast, then in a kind of self-destructive shock one goes and does something really second-rate. Almost as if to prove it.