I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.
‐‐ John Dalton
I spent several years cooking on a line.
‐‐ Jose Garces
I spent six years touring the world playing Shakespeare, Molire, Shaw, Goldsmith... But I slowly came to realise that the people you are working with are as important as the parts you play, and that there were lots of interesting people working in film and T.V.
‐‐ Stephen Mangan
I spent so long studying really hard to become a fine actor, but threw it all away because I got the adulation and the fame so easily.
‐‐ Mickey Rourke
I spent so many summers and New Years and fun times in New Orleans. It was always a place where I felt I could go and actually let go and enjoy the spirit of something.
‐‐ Sandra Bullock
I spent so many years in terror of 'making it legal' because the expression rang all too true - the wedding ritual struck me as nothing but a flowery front for the fulfilment of countless, tedious contracts and obligations.
‐‐ Lynn Coady
I spent so many years just saying what I felt without thinking about the ramifications, without understanding that I have this opinion but not everyone might share that opinion and now they don't like me because of it.
‐‐ Katherine Heigl
I spent so many years of my life as a stage actor and when you do all these plays, a lot of really great plays are very politically driven. They deal with deep social issues, and that's the kind of stuff that I love, as an audience member.
‐‐ Danny Strong
I spent so many years with people saying, 'Hey, you're like America's boyfriend!'
‐‐ Luke Wilson
I spent some time at a university for traditional Chinese medicine. There's a resurgence of people eating according to traditional Chinese medicine. So our challenge is, How do you marry traditional Chinese medicine with PepsiCo's products?
‐‐ Indra Nooyi
I spent some time at White Memorial Medical Center as a senior medical student doing a rotation in surgery; however, I felt I wasn't getting enough time assisting.
‐‐ Samuel Wilson
I spent some time back in Mexico at 16 because my parents thought it would be prudent for me to learn Spanish, because I held a Mexican passport.
‐‐ Lupita Nyong'o
I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'.
‐‐ Jennifer Haigh
I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.
‐‐ Juan Pablo Di Pace
I spent ten years playing classical piano, and that was what led to keyboards and eventually to production and to Linkin Park.
‐‐ Mike Shinoda
I spent ten years riding motorcycles.
‐‐ Rachel Kushner
I spent the 1960s and 1970s seeking myself - the working-class tradition of self-education.
‐‐ Ken Livingstone
I spent the '90s trying to hide out, trying to duck the full celebrity cacophony.
‐‐ Brad Pitt
I spent the better part of my developing years in Massachusetts.
‐‐ Betsy Beers
I spent the bulk of my career on building my company, and Morningstar is where the passion is.
‐‐ Joe Mansueto
I spent the first 12 years of my life growing up in Singapore. Back then, in the early '80s, it was still a tropical island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula striving to shine on the world stage.
‐‐ Kevin Kwan
I spent the first 18 years of my life in the pastoral town of Vernal, Utah, in the shadows of the Book Cliffs and the Uinta Mountains.
‐‐ Gordon Gee
I spent the first 22 years of my life absorbing everything, like a big disgusting cell, and now I'm disgorging it with jokes added out into the world. That's a really gross metaphor.
‐‐ Mallory Ortberg
I spent the first 25 years of my life not knowing what I wanted to do.
‐‐ Jack Dee
I spent the first 33 years of my life with secrets, and lots of them. I spent a great deal of energy worrying over what people thought and obscuring the things I was ashamed of... trying to appear what I thought was normal.
‐‐ Bill Clegg
I spent the first fourteen years of my life convinced that my looks were hideous. Adolescence is painful for everyone, I know, but mine was plain weird.
‐‐ Uma Thurman
I spent the first summer after my diagnosis creeping about in giant sun hats and tents, cursing the sun, staying inside as much as possible. Now I am beginning to think the most important thing is educated sun exposure, because the melanomas of today are not caused by today's sunbathing, but by our childhoods and early adolescence.
‐‐ Jane Green
I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.
‐‐ Sue Grafton
I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't.
‐‐ Simon McBurney
I spent the night on a sliver of rock high up on the east face of Long's Peak, climbing with Tom Frost, and slept at the icy feet of the Dru, listening to the lightning crack above me and the thunder roll down. I only did it to write about it. I would never go up on the Grotto Wall for fun.
‐‐ James Salter
I spent the whole first year of my career just on my legs. If you have good legs under you, then you can punch. Anybody can stand and throw their hands and look like an idiot. If you actually want to learn how to punch, you have to work on being balanced on your legs and feeling your legs under you. Feel the ground.
‐‐ Ronda Rousey
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.
‐‐ Smedley Butler
I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that, I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.
‐‐ Donald Ray Pollock
I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy.
‐‐ Darin Strauss
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
‐‐ Ray Bradbury
I spent three days with Don King, and I interviewed 45 people. I studied his speech, his mannerisms. He invited me to a couple of fights, and I watched him.
‐‐ Ving Rhames
I spent three of the best years of my life in 10th grade.
‐‐ Bob Uecker
I spent three years at RMIT doing a bachelor of arts and media studies. It was a hugely formative experience. As someone who had a private Catholic school upbringing, the world suddenly became a much bigger and better place for me.
‐‐ Sonya Hartnett
I spent time at my grandfather Dino's gourmet store where he brought in chefs from Naples to cook. I thought of them as rock stars.
‐‐ Giada De Laurentiis
I spent time in, like, criminal courts, and covering murder trials for papers.
‐‐ Kurt Loder
I spent twelve years training for a career that was over in a week. Joe Namath spent one week training for a career that lasted twelve years.
‐‐ Caitlyn Jenner
I spent two months in Fredericksburg, Texas, when I was 8, while my father shot a movie, and I loved it. I just embraced the whole cowboy culture. I got myself a pair of awesome boots and a cowboy hat.
‐‐ Alexander Skarsgard
I spent two months on the first draft, working 8 hours a day, five days a week.
‐‐ George Stephen
I spent two weeks prancing around a studio in Queens in my underwear with nine other guys. They were long days. But what the hell, it was Calvin Klein.
‐‐ Michael Bergin
I spent two years figuring out how I could turn it into something that would satisfy me as a musician but also make some kind of cross-cultural link. I feel that I kind of at least touched on the possibilities of cross-cultural music, but it is a lifetime's work, and I don't profess to be anything other than a novice at it.
‐‐ Damon Albarn
I spent two years in Palo Alto - what an awful, suffocating place for those of us who don't care about yoga, yogurts and start-ups - and now I have moved to Cambridge, MA - which, in many respects, is like Palo Alto but a bit snarkier.
‐‐ Evgeny Morozov
I spent two years in the Army. And my older brother, who was also a great positive influence on me, encouraged me to think about law school, and I said - well, I didn't have any money.
‐‐ George J. Mitchell
I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.
‐‐ Anthony Hopkins
I spent two years living in London - I'd have stayed for ever if I could have got a work visa. It was there I started collecting vinyl and fell in love with the sounds of the 1970s.
‐‐ Lady Starlight
I spent two years playing open mic nights in Brighton, and I heard more and more people saying, 'You should give it a go in London.'
‐‐ James Bay