A Quote by Leah Stewart

A lot of people see it as a kind of failure to stay in the place where you’re from, especially if you’re from the Midwest. Like ambition is geographic. — © Leah Stewart
A lot of people see it as a kind of failure to stay in the place where you’re from, especially if you’re from the Midwest. Like ambition is geographic.
So the Midwest nourishes us [...] and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain. And so we run to our bedrooms and read in a fever, and love the big hardwood trees outside the windows, and the terrible Midwest summers, and the terrible Midwest winters [...]. And so we leave it sorrowfully, having grown strong and restless by opposing with all our will and mind and muscle its simple, loving, single will for us: that we stay, that we stay and find a place among its familiar possibilities. Mother knew we would go; she encouraged us.
I think, in storytelling, people want to see triumph, and so it's usually nice to start with failure and see someone somehow rise above it. People like to see people try. And they like to see people fail for comedy, and they like to see people succeed for the drama and emotion.
If my ambition was to stay a manager the rest of my life, then I'd probably follow what people think managers are supposed to be like, but my ambition was never to be a manager.
I like getting feedback from people who show a lot of potential, and it's exciting to witness to new talents developing and bourgeoning. I always try to stay around the newest stuff, I don't like to stay with something that's kind of old or approaching it.
People in the Midwest, there's a lot of regional pride and a lot more, like, fake positivity - 'That's great - you're awesome!'
I don't like a lot of attention. That's kind of who I am at heart. So I see everything, the people circulating around me and a lot of people know me - it kind of feels like a heavy weight sometimes.
I’ve had that kind of experience myself: I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what’. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It’s like measles - you can’t show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It’s curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration.
Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.
I think also just being from the Midwest, my dad was a stoic Midwesterner, he always told me never take anything for granted and you have to work for what you get so. That's funny because my friend Frank Anderson said something really funny he goes, "A lot of the people from the midwest are the laziest shits I've ever met." And he's right. I know some. You can't say its a stereotype that only people from the Midwest are that way because there are definitely people I know who hate to work and just want to hang out and drink beer.
To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.
Hell is not a place you go if you're not a Christian, it's the failure of your life's greatest ambition.
It's better to go to one place and stay put and see it than run around a lot of territory and see nothing.
Acting is a weird, kind of alienating job because you're in an isolated place. Even if you're working with a lot of other people, you're kind of alienated. Actors say that a lot, and I kind of find that to be true.
When I work, I like to just kind of stay quiet, stay to myself. I like to walk around a lot and figure out what's gonna happen in the scene and try to get my head straight.
Folks like me have to feel a little indebted to the communities that they came from. And if they do, I think we'll start to see a little bit more of a geographic integration in the country because people will start to think, 'You know what? I owe that place something, and I should return to it in one form or another.'
Don't stay in a bad situation - whether it is a relationship or a job - out of fear of failure. It's not a failure to walk away and choose to be happy. It takes a lot of courage.
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