Showbiz Quotes

Evan Handler is a man who’s looked into the abyss and laughed. His book, It’s Only Temporary, made me laugh along with him. He covers love, lust, showbiz, triumph, and despair – and he manages to be both funny and inspiring about all of it. It’s an important book that I think can help to spread goodness around the world. Something we desperately need.

Always remember, if you decide to come to the showbiz party the dress code is ‘Thick Skin’. Our

Sadness is just happiness turned on its ass—it's all showbiz!

The shrill witch-hunter voices of the showbiz correspondents would bring up every last bit left in your stomach from the night before

Jim Reston: Walking through the crowds of air-kissing politicians, actors and high fliers, it was tough to tell where the politics stopped and the showbiz started. Maybe, in the end, there is no difference.

Liberace was certainly master and commander of the ivories ~ he is the only pianist I can watch or listen to without suffering a case of 'Stagefright Sympathy Sickness'.

Then you go backstage and get a tour, and this to you is truly the coolest thing in the world. You’re shown the set and the lights and the costumes and learn another variation on the same basic lesson about showbiz you will learn over and over again—it’s all, fundamentally, just a bunch of crap glued together and spray-painted over. But the wonderful paradox is that knowing this does not detract from the experience of watching it a second time. On the contrary: it makes it that much more miraculous.

The Hell’s Angels as a group are often willfully stupid, but they are not without savoir-faire, and their predilection for travelling in packs is a long way from being all showbiz. Nor is it entirely due to warps and defects in their collective personality.

life is like a showbiz because you'll never know you're ending or if tomorrow you're still in the famous and hot star or in another day you're not famous

There are two important showbiz rules, kiddo: always know where your wallet is . . . and show up.

These absurd showbiz queens are as much a part of New York street life as sirens, steam from manholes, or ghostly Asian deliverymen ferrying chop-suey-to-go on unlit bikes going the wrong way.

If Elvis ..is the definition of rock, then rock is remembered as showbiz...It becomes a solely performative art form, where the meaning of a song matters less than the person singing it. It becomes personality music...if Dylan...becomes the definition of rock, everything reverses. In this contingency, lyrical authenticity becomes everything: Rock is galvanized as an intellectual craft, interlocked with the folk tradition...The fact that Dylan does not have a conventionally "good" singing voice becomes retrospective proof that rock audiences prioritized substance over style...

She had quite possibly drifted into acting because of her father’s connections in showbiz. It would have been that or some sort of PR or work in a posh Mayfair art gallery. I also remembered his divorce, which had been all over the papers. He had left his wife for a model not all that much older than his daughter.

Looking at the Universe, you cannot help noticing that the entertainment aspect greatly supersedes the educational value.

There's nothing permanent, except change.

Immediately across the road is a ruined abbey and cemetery. As I haven't visited one since late yesterday afternoon, I decide to take a look. On the whole, it's fair to say that, if you're travelling round the west of Ireland, an interest in ruined abbeys, however slight, will stand you in better stead than a passion for rollerblading, say or a penchant for showbiz gossip.

Oh. No. The only thing worse than a cancer diagnosis is a growing-up diagnosis. I am horrified of growing up. First, I’m small for my age, which is a benefit in showbiz because I can book roles for characters younger than me. I can work longer hours on set and have to take fewer breaks by law. Logistics aside, I’m more cooperative and can take direction better than those seven-year-old scumbags.

They say you can fool some of the people all of the time. Accordingly, I think we should concentrate on this group initially. We can move on to the people you can only fool some of the time at a later date if we deem it necessary.

A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask. An Elephant in her disguise as a human princess, a Scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch’s hat, a Wizard’s showbiz display, a cleric’s stole, a scholar’s gown, a soldier’s dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?

root of the Wallace magic was a cynical, showbiz instinct for knowing exactly which issues would whip a hall full of beer-drinking factory workers into a frenzy—and then doing exactly that, by howling down from the podium that he had an instant, overnight cure for all their worst afflictions: Taxes? Nigras? Army worms killing the turnip crop? Whatever it was, Wallace assured his supporters that the solution was actually real simple, and that the only reason they had any hassle with the government at all was because those greedy bloodsuckers in Washington didn’t want the problems solved, so they wouldn’t be put out of work.

Similar to Christ’s, rap’s mission is self-esteem for those “previously deemed shit.” So it’s as dangerous as Christ’s. Because a lot of kids of all manner are listening, and no one in the industry wants their top floors threatened by either the wrong skin color or the wrong mindset—that is, anyone who cares about truth. Kids are the market, but you have to keep them believing they’re worth less than the stars or they won’t think they need what stars are selling. Wait till you see. When showbiz execs realize they can’t kill rap, they will hijack it. They’ll make millionaires of impostor rappers who say things like “You can’t be like me.

I asked Wendy Melvoin how serious she thought Prince was in his theological questioning. ‘I felt it was showbiz for me,’ she told me. ‘I did not relate personally. But part of the beauty of it back then is that there were Jews, Mexicans, blacks, whites, gays and straights in his band. Everyone had their own opinions and they were tolerated and embraced.’ Lisa Coleman developed this thought. ‘I felt when I first joined the band he thought it was more important to pose questions than to get answers, and somewhere along the line he looked at it and now he doesn’t pose the questions any more, he tells you what the answers are. That counts a lot of people out.’ Wendy agreed: ‘He always had a tendency to speak in parables. He’s not a clear talker. He can speak quickly and monosyllabically and get to the point of what he wants, but when you get down to really philosophical questions and get into a conversation it can become very difficult to follow. He has a different language that he’s learned.

Allyn Ferguson, who worked with the Carpenters in the early 1970s, witnessed the downhill slide of many artists, even legends like Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. “It happens to everybody,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the people themselves. They’re doing the same thing they always did. The public gets tired of them. It’s a strange thing how the American public is not only fickle, but they respond to a lot of different things that are not musical at all, like the publicity and the attention that everybody’s giving them. It’s like a mob mentality. When the idol starts to have the image disappear, American fans just move on to the next one. That’s a part of show business. We have a great term in showbiz—everybody’s a ‘star fucker,’ which means if you’re not a star anymore everybody just turns their back. It’s very fleeting, and there are tragedies. I think Karen was one of those tragedies, and I could name dozens of other people who can’t deal with the fact that it’s not like it used to be.

Soiree in Rome. The women are more attractive than the men - they always are. My first impression is that all the men are ugly (they are producers and film directors) and that all the women are beautiful (they are actresses). On a second view: the men are ugly, but they have character; all the women have something erotic about them, but nothing remarkable - a purely macho society, the world of showbiz. The big scene with the male lead is played out in all its grandeur, from one palazzo to the next in the Roman night. The most beautiful actress I know is marrying a rich director, author of 97 screenplays. This is the rule among the showbiz crowd. As usual I feel alienation from all the men there and solidarity with all the women, whom the men pretend to scorn in order to please them, but to whom they are basically indifferent. It must be nice to live in bodies so beautiful, so ingenuous, and allow the men to dominate you with all their ugliness, wealth and pretensions. It must be marvellous to be a woman. Ultimately, it is this which is fascinating: woman is unimaginable. The more beautiful she is, the more unimaginable.

the best moment in showbiz is when it is over. It’s somewhat like sex in that regard…

Showbiz is shamanism, music is worship. Whether its worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, whether it comes from that ancient place we call soul or simply the spinal cortex, whether the prayers are on fire with dumb rage or dove-like desire, the smoke goes upwards, to God or something you replace God with-- usually yourself.

If somebody wants to compete, I'll just pull out enough to win.

Now I'm really mad at the Yeerks," Marco said. "They're getting in the way of my showbiz career. I could be a millionaire. I could be trading funny lines with Dave. I could have beautiful Hollywood supermodels all over me." "Uh-huh," I said, with a wink at Cassie. "Lots of women love animals. But sooner or later you'd have to change back into your actual self, Marco. An then, boom, they'd be outta there." -Animorphs #2, The Visitor, page 13

I had found somebody who lived a life as unconventional as my own. She above anybody would understand that monogamy had nothing to do with my feelings for her. I could go to work and have sex with countless beautiful women, and at the end of the day I'd come home to her and be as devoted as ever. And when she made porn films, it worked the same way. I would call it emotional monogamy...physical nonmonogamy.

She was also unaware that the ego of the artiste is extremely fragile.

Writing about Cuban culture in the Special Period, Hernández-Reguant referred to ‘Havana’s new showbiz elite’ that had emerged with the increasing marketisation of culture, while artists and artisans were among those who ‘got richer’ by being ‘plugged into transnational economic networks’.125 In the state-owned publishing sector, the sudden and severe lack of resources saw an implosion of publications.

Staring into the naked orange flames of the firepit, naked flesh, naked Carrie Donaldson on the bare rug in exhausted, sated semi-sleep beside him, Jack Barron felt a carapace of image-history-skin encysting him like steel walls of a TV set, a creature imprisoned in the electronic circuitry of his own head perceiving through promptboard vidphone fleshless electronic speed of light ersatz senses, separated from the girl beside him by the phosphor-dot impenetrable glass TV screen Great Wall of China of his own image. First time I remember being blown feeling like wet put-down ugliness, he brooded. Ugly, he told himself, is a thing you feel — truth is ugly when it's a weapon, lie is beautiful when an act of love ugly when it's one-sided fuck is beautiful when it's simple, mutual, nobullshit balling, ugly when chick gets her kicks off you that really isn't there, is why you feel like a rotten lump of shit, man. Getting blown Sara go down being dug by woman's a pure gas; being sucked off, image-statue living lie, someone else's lie being eaten (Let me eat you, let me eat you, baby!) is a dirty act of plastic cannibalism, her dirtiness, not mine. Whole world's full of plastic cannibals feeding their own little bags off meals of my goddamned image-flesh, eating Jack Barron ghost that isn't there. And now Morris and my so-called friend Luke are hot to package my living-color bod into TV dinners, sell to hundred million viewer-voter cannibals for thirty pieces of power silver.

We made our way forward employing the three steps to success in showbiz: 1. Persistence 2. Begging 3. Waiting—then start again at the top

Still, it was hard not to be impressed by the names who would be involved. Present in the room that day were William Pedersen, co-founder of the high-rise titans Kohn Pedersen Fox; David Childs, partner at the juggernaut Skidmore Owings and Merrill, who had designed Time Warner Center; Elizabeth Diller, from the “cerebral boutique” Diller Scofidio + Renfro, whose visions had informed the High Line; David Rockwell, a “virtuoso of showbiz and restaurant design”; Howard Elkus, from the high-end shopping-center specialists Elkus Manfredi; and landscape architect Thomas Woltz.

In a world so influenced by media, with a populace addicted to cheap entertainment and omnipresent pop culture, celebrities have their own place of prominence at the apex of society. Every branch of showbiz - music, television, cinema, and even braindance - has its own stars whose works shape trends, opinions, and tastes. Their live concerts and releases of new content are worldwide events, observed and celebrated by tens of millions of fans all around the globe. Most of them, like Us Cracks, are products of the entertainment industry - devised and created to feed current fashions. Some of them are natural-born talents, discovered and promoted by some manager who recognized their potential and helped them to unpack it. Regardless of their origins, they will shine brightly for a period of time until some new star outshines them, or they're cast aside by their fans' ever-changing tastes. Until then, they will be admired and worshiped, living filthy-rich lives in fabulous estates and villas, whimsically coasting about in limos, private jets, and luxury boats - the embodiment of the public's dreams and desires. Demigods among mere mortals.

First rule of showbiz, my sightless friend…regardless of the size of your audience…always make an entrance, boy…always make an entrance!” —Mysterio (Quentin Beck)

It’s nice, having my very first showbiz friend back. Still. If he pees on me, I will be calling my lawyer.

I write my life like a movie. Every scene is a creative production and I get to write the script.

Well, we have to remember that this whole band thing was kind of thrown together at the last minute. We hadn’t even picked a name yet.” Sasha started talking into a headset, and suddenly the house lights dimmed. The curtains opened to reveal the first act, which was a seventh-grade rap group dressed in fuzzy dog costumes. They were performing the song “Who Let the Dogs Out?” I hoped it was supposed to be a comedy act. “This is SO unfair!” Chloe groaned. “There has to be something we can do!” Zoey moaned. “That’s showbiz!” Violet said sarcastically. Sasha shot us a dirty look and covered the mic on her headset. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to put on a show here. Take it out in the hall. Please!” We sighed and slowly shuffled out of the dark auditorium. Then the five of us threw a private pity party for Dorkalicious. Everyone looked SO disappointed. It was heartbreaking.

Tactical use of the media can be equated to power behind your skill or special ability. It is in the power of the media to help market your brand. You just need to look at Hollywood, European football, Bollywood, Nollywood, Global fashion & modeling, showbiz and even humanitarian efforts, to appreciate that the making and destroying of stars, initiatives and legends is to a greater extent influenced by the role played by the media.

A drip of knowledge from here and a drip from there, till he saw that his lucky world was founded on horror. Like Peter the Great’s city beside the Neva, his city was built upon a layer of crushed human beings, hundreds of thousands of them, or perhaps even millions. And you were not supposed to mind too much. It was enough to be assured that such things no longer happened, that mistakes had been made but were now corrected. It served no purpose to look back. It did no good to toss in bed in your elegant apartment and remember the ways in which you’d helped to give horror its showbiz smile, its interludes of song and dance.

Jim Reston: Walking through the crowds of air-kissing politicians, actors and high fliers, it was tough to tell where the politicians stopped and the showbiz started. Maybe, in the end, there is no difference.

My point is this—if you want to be happy in showbiz (or any creative field), listen to that voice inside you. Even if it says “Fuck it” sometimes. Work with your friends. Avoid chasing fame or money. Just do what you want to do, when and how you want to do it. And if it’s not making you happy, quit. Quit hard, and quit often. Eventually you’ll end up somewhere that you never want to leave." - Bobcat Goldthwait

Upon discovering what Fred had done, his mother grabbed him and stripped his clothes off. She stuck his butt out the window and yelled at the top of her voice, “Everyone in the neighborhood come quickly and see Freddie’s bare ass!” That would be the first of many times during Fred Levin’s life that he would bare his backside for the world to see.

When Gloria Arroyo ran for reelection in the Philippines in 2004, the Economist published an article titled “Democracy as Showbiz,” and whinged that running for president in the Philippines is so expensive that celebrity name recognition has become crucial. Oh, horrors: Arroyo ran against a movie star and a televangelist. America

How big are you, really? I always say that I'm two inches... from the floor.

Paige's full name is Mindy Paige Davis, and until Tradung Spaces, that was her showbiz name too. She likes the name Paige and tacked it onto her first name, so her family and friends still call her Mindy Paige. When she got the Trading Spaces job, the producers asked her I'd "Mindy" was short for anything more mature-sounding. Paige decided to drop her first name. That solved one problem, but it caused another when her boyfriend, Patrick, proposed: his last name is Page. So Paige kept her maiden name. Patrick had always called her Mindy, but for her 32nd birthday, he gave his wife a unique gift: He started calling her Paige.

Samuel Morse, the man for whom the Morse Code was named, was convinced immigrants were destroying America. “A conspiracy exists … its plans are already in operation,” he wrote. “The serpent has already commenced his coil about our limbs, and the lethargy of his poison is creeping over us … We must awake, or we are lost.

taping of the Hollywood Palace TV show. In America then, if you had long hair, you were a faggot as well as a freak. They would shout across the street, “Hey, fairies!” Dean Martin introduced as something like “these long-haired wonders from England, the Rolling Stones.… They’re backstage picking the fleas off each other.” A lot of sarcasm and eyeball rolling. Then he said, “Don’t leave me alone with this,” gesturing with horror in our direction. This was Dino, the rebel Rat Packer who cocked his finger at the entertainment world by pretending to be drunk all the time. We were, in fact, quite stunned. English comperes and showbiz types may have been hostile, but they didn’t treat you like some dumb circus act. Before we’d gone on, he’d had the bouffanted King Sisters and performing elephants, standing on their hind legs. I love old Dino. He was a pretty funny bloke, even though he wasn’t ready for the changing of the guard. On to Texas and more freak show appearances, in one case with a pool of performing seals between us and the audience at the San Antonio Texas State Fair. That was where I first met Bobby Keys, the great saxophone player, my closest pal (we were born within hours of each other).

Music should be censored,” said Moissaye Boguslawski of the Chicago Symphony. “There is censorship for the film and for the stage, yet none for music, for which it is even more needed. I believe much recent criminal endeavor by youths has to a degree been influenced by jazz. Americans probably would not be so highly flattered if they knew they were paying tribute to the music of Africa.

Same goes for public announcements of all kinds: it’s all showbiz, and that’s not a criticism. My favorite term for a certain new kind of performance is “security theater.” In this genre, we watch as ritualized inspections and pat-downs create the illusion of security. It’s a form that has become common since 9/11, and even the government agencies that participate in this activity acknowledge, off the record, that it is indeed a species of theater.

The John Birch Society spread a rumor that the Beatles had been devised by the Soviets to destabilize America.

I sometimes told people my dad reminded me of Robin Williams, and they would assume I meant the drive to entertain, the old showbiz patter. But it was really that ever-present Pig-Pen cloud of kind-eyed sadness.

The Partridge Family. In his episode, the Partridge Family’s multicolored bus breaks down in a Black neighborhood.

Every birthday party, while all the other kids tore ass around Showbiz shrieking at a deafening volume and raucously playing arcade games, I would volunteer to stand guard over the gift table, talking about mom stuff with the moms.

One day in 1998, a real estate broker called Offit: “Would you make a loan to Donald Trump?” Trump at the time was a casino magnate known for his occasional showbiz hijinks and his on-and-off dealings with organized crime figures. He also was a deadbeat, having defaulted on loans to finance his Atlantic City casinos and stiffing lenders, contractors, and business partners in other projects. Quite a few banks—including Citigroup, Manufacturers Hanover (a predecessor of JPMorgan), the British lender NatWest, and of course Bankers Trust—had endured hundreds of millions of losses at the hands of Trump.

Adapting’ is what constitutes selling out,” he explained to me in a largely unprinted interview for Terrorizer magazine in 2007. “Adapting to the preferences of the masses, ridding yourself of unwanted contents, washing your hands until they are clean and shiny, ready for mass production. The genius of black metal lies within its unbound chaotic essence, untamed artistry, and wild and evil creative thinking. This is why selling out is considered not so sexy within a black metal context. Both Gorgoroth and Dissection refused to adapt themselves to the will of others. Satyricon stands for rock ‘n’ roll entertainment, Dissection for Satanism. The former means showbiz, the latter means black metal. I see nothing wrong with being involved in showbiz—I like Frank Sinatra and stuff like that. But what I just don’t understand is who these bands are trying to fool when they claim to still be bonded to the black metal legacy. They blindly follow rule number one in the book: ‘How to lose one’s credibility,’ namely, ‘Don’t be credible.

The largest Urdu Fankari web site of the world, Urdu News, Urdu Poetry, Horoscope, Technology, Weather, Business, Sports, Health, Islam, Women, Show-biz, Addab, Islamic Names, Articles and Features.

We have indeed become civilised, look, as prostitutes become the call girls and their Ponce, the manager, and furthermore, the red line is now showbiz.

Five minutes before practice is scheduled to end, Coach Giles blows his whistle and motions for us to join him at the bench. His typically stoic face crinkles into something like a smile. “Great news,” he says. “Just got a text from the activities office. Halcyon Lake has been selected as one of this year’s HockeyFest cities.” Carter whoops and Justin lifts me off my skates and spins me around as the guys talk over one another in their excitement. “Holy crap,” Showbiz Schroeder says. “Ho.Ly. Crap.” This is the closet Showbiz comes to swearing (admirable, considering the potty mouths on our team), further evidence that this announcement is a big deal.

Stan had, in a way, fulfilled the wish he’d harbored since at least the end of World War II: He was finally free from the world of comic books. The time had come to try his hand in showbiz. Like a wish on the monkey’s paw, the results ended up being as much curse as blessing.

One day in 1998, a real estate broker called Offit: “Would you make a loan to Donald Trump?” Trump at the time was a casino magnate known for his occasional showbiz hijinks and his on-and-off dealings with organized crime figures. He also was a deadbeat, having defaulted on loans to finance his Atlantic City casinos and stiffing lenders, contractors, and business partners in other projects. Quite a few banks—including

In this business (showbiz) it takes time to be really good and by that time, you're obsolete.

and then once you put yourself there in that hopeless place, what are your options? Say you lose everything—the house, the school for the kids, the ability to interface with what had been your lifelines—what do you do? And whuddya know, I came up with something! I saw myself as a teacher at NYU or some noble institution for the arts, back in New York City, living in a two-bedroom in what-the-fuck-ever neighborhood we could afford on a teacher’s pay. And it was good, it was fine. Life went on. And it was a good life. And suddenly calm washed over me, almost as if to make me fearless. Because I just dealt with the worst-case scenario and came out the other side unscathed, with everything intact. And I even had some amazing memories of all the glory days I had in showbiz. I was smiling. Fuck, I was happy. And the energy changed. All of a sudden I was giving off a different brand of pheromones. Calmness replaced anxiety. My worst fears had been addressed, and I still had everything that matters, and then some. And sure enough, a funny thing happened

The red-light area is for the public, and similarly, the showbiz celebrities center is for the high gentry and upper class; they both carry the same context, but the second ones enjoy standard quality.

In the end it's decided to ship Delphi down to the GTX holocam enclave in Chile to try a spot on one of the mainstream shows. (Never mind why an Infanta takes up acting.) The holocam complex occupies a couple of mountains where an observatory once used the clear air. Holocam total-environment shells are very expensive and electronically super-stable. Inside them actors can move freely without going off-register and the whole scene or any selected part will show up in the viewer's home in complete 3-di, so real you can look up their noses and much denser than you get from mobile rigs. You can blow a tit ten feet tall when there's no molecular skiffle around. The enclave looks—well, take everything you know about Hollywood-Burbank and throw it away. What Delphi sees coming down is a neat giant mushroom-farm, domes of all sizes up to monsters for the big games and stuff. It's orderly. The idea that art thrives on creative flamboyance has long been torpedoed by proof that what art needs is computers. Because this showbiz has something TV and Hollywood never had—automated inbuilt viewer feedback. Samples, ratings, critics, polls? Forget it. With that carrier field you can get real-time response-sensor readouts from every receiver in the world, served up at your console. That started as a thingie to give the public more influence on content. Yes. Try it, man. You're at the console. Slice to the sex-age-educ-econ-ethno-cetera audience of your choice and start. You can't miss. Where the feedback warms up, give 'em more of that. Warm—warmer—hot! You've hit it—the secret itch under those hides, the dream in those hearts. You don't need to know its name. With your hand controlling all the input and your eye reading all the response you can make them a god . . . and somebody'll do the same for you.

In one life she was a travel vlogger who had 1,750,000 YouTube subscribers and almost as many people following her on Instagram, and her most popular video was one where she fell off a gondola in Venice. She also had one about Rome called 'A Roma Therapy'. In one life she was a single parent to a baby that literally wouldn't sleep. In one life she ran the showbiz column in a tabloid newspaper and did stories about Ryan Bailey's relationships. In one life she was the picture editor at the National Geographic. In one life she was a successful eco-architect who lived a carbon-neutral existence in a self-designed bungalow that harvested rain-water and ran on solar power. In one life she was an aid worker in Bostwana. In one life a cat-sitter. In one life a volunteer in a homeless shelter. In one life she was sleeping on her only friend's sofa. In one life she taught music in Montreal. In one life she spent all day arguing with people she didn't know on Twitter and ended a fair proportion of her tweets by saying 'Do better' while secretly realising she was telling herself to do that. In one life she had no social media accounts. In one life she'd never drunk alcohol. In one life she was a chess champion and currently visiting Ukraine for a tournament. In one life she was married to a minor Royal and hated every minute. In one life her Facebook and Instagram only contained quotes from Rumi and Lao Tzu. In one life she was on to her third husband and already bored. In one life she was a vegan power-lifter. In one life she was travelling around South Corsican coast, and they talked quantum mechanics and got drunk together at a beachside bar until Hugo slipped away, out of that life, and mid-sentence, so Nora was left talking to a blank Hugo who was trying to remember her name. In some lives Nora attracted a lot of attention. In some lives she attracted none. In some lives she was rich. In some lives she was poor. In some lives she was healthy. In some lives she couldn't climb the stairs without getting out of breath. In some lives she was in a relationship, in others she was solo, in many she was somewhere in between. In some lives she was a mother, but in most she wasn't. She had been a rock star, an Olympics, a music teacher, a primary school teacher, a professor, a CEO, a PA, a chef, a glaciologist, a climatologist, an acrobat, a tree-planter, an audit manager, a hair-dresser, a professional dog walker, an office clerk, a software developer, a receptionist, a hotel cleaner, a politician, a lawyer, a shoplifter, the head of an ocean protection charity, a shop worker (again), a waitress, a first-line supervisor, a glass-blower and a thousand other things. She'd had horrendous commutes in cars, on buses, in trains, on ferries, on bike, on foot. She'd had emails and emails and emails. She'd had a fifty-three-year-old boss with halitosis touch her leg under a table and text her a photo of his penis. She'd had colleagues who lied about her, and colleagues who loved her, and (mainly) colleagues who were entirely indifferent. In many lives she chose not to work and in some she didn't choose not to work but still couldn't find any. In some lives she smashed through the glass ceiling and in some she just polished it. She had been excessively over- and under-qualified. She had slept brilliantly and terribly. In some lives she was on anti-depressants and in others she didn't even take ibuprofen for a headache. In some lives she was a physically healthy hypochondriac and in some a seriously ill hypochondriac and in most she wasn't a hypochondriac at all. There was a life where she had chronic fatigue, a life where she had cancer, a life where she'd suffered a herniated disc and broken her ribs in a car accident.