My rule is: the second you find yourself doing something you hate, quit doing it.
When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there's a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we're going to see things through to the finish or quit.
The day you stop enjoying something is the day you should quit, if you can afford to.
I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre.
I'm about as healthy as a person can be. I quit smoking seven or eight years ago.
The unemployment rate has effectively not gone down from where it was at the peak of the recession. The only reason it's gone technically from 10 percent to 8 percent is so many people are discouraged and have quit work.
I don't come from an artistic family, so I didn't know what theater was. I was working on Wall Street in the '90s, and I went to see 'Appointment With a High-Wire Lady' at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and it affected me so deeply. It changed everything I thought about the arts. I quit banking and became an actor.
Sometimes it's easy to see the negative side of things or question why people bully you. You could think, 'Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm not worth it. Maybe I should just quit.' But that's when you should fight the hardest. Now I don't mean fight physically, but mentally. Keep being you.
Unlike a typical professional, I can't quit my job to become a full-time author; I don't have that luxury. For me, writing is therapy; if I choose to write full-time, it might start feeling like work.
