There's a bit of hazing when it comes to the youth performers and a disbelief that you're capable of handling dramatic or comedic material on an adult level.

I took opportunities, big or small, to show that I was a constant professional. I feel like the Sam Jackson of network TV drama.

The conventions of an almighty agency tapping you for greatness and signing you up and telling you this is going to be the next big thing; that has not been my career.

You need fans in high places, I always tell people. I don't care how talented you are.

In those days it was pretty cut and dry. If you had a record company believing in you enough to cut an album then you had better have the ability to work the album on the road.

You have to have a life. And life has to go on when your voice shuts down on you and you have to take a break from what you're doing for a career.

So in fact the only thing you can judge in this sport its the longterm. You can judge a career or a season, but not one race.

To recruit staff, I traveled all over the country talking with people who had been working on one or another aspect of the atomic-energy enterprise and people in radar work, for example, and underwater sound, telling them about the job, the place that we are going to, and enlisting their enthusiasm.