Looking back at the ‘Wonder Years,’ I see things I did well, and I see things I did very, very badly.
My failures were something for me – my first contact with professional football. Though it didn’t go all that well, it’s not a regret, it’s just like that. But looking back, those failures helped me consider football differently, consider the professional game differently.
I’m an incurable optimist, and I’m a great believer in never looking back. Life is too short, and new challenges are exciting.
I don’t spend much time looking back at what happened. I do remember it, but I don’t see any purpose of wanting to look back.
When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world, in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble.
I enjoyed playing, and I’ve got a full and happy life now, so it’s not like I’m looking back longingly at my time in football.
Looking back, I’m really happy with the choices I’ve made in my career. I know for a fact I could be wealthier. Who knows, maybe I could be more successful, maybe not. I don’t know. But just about every single thing I’ve ever done I’ve gone into with the right intentions, and that goes a long way.
Estimation, assessment, looking back, retrospecting things – those are intellectual concepts, and they’re always so subject to shifts in the wind.
I was interested in public service, and looking back at my father, my grandfather and two great-grandfathers, well, yeah, that’s what they did, too. And I think public service, like journalism, done right is a really honourable, really important profession.
Looking back, when I was Gollum, I suppose I did break the mold to a certain extent. I’m proud, and very thrilled, to be a part of that.
Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, with me as the chief obstacle.
Looking back on humanity’s battle with pollution, history has been made by thousands of ordinary people who one day say, ‘No. I’m not satisfied. I don’t want to wait, and I don’t want to pass the buck. I want to stand up and do something. I want to do it here, and I want do to it now.’
Looking back now, if I went to film school, it probably would have helped knowing what the best of the best of foreign films were, but that wasn’t the case. In some ways, I think that led to my originality, because I hadn’t seen anybody else.
I was only in Scotland for four months or something, but I look back at that, and it was a big learning curve for me in that short spell. I went there with an open mind to show everyone in Scotland what I was about. Looking back, I am very glad with the decision I made.
I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I’m 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn’t been a part of it, I would hate myself.
I love looking back at the older fights; they don’t make them like they used to. Just watching Tommy Hearns, the technique in his punching, the brilliance and the combinations from the likes of Ray Leonard and ‘Sugar’ Ray Robinson.
I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life.
That’s the funny thing about time. It is only in looking back that it’s easy to connect the dots. To see exactly why everything needed to happen the way that it did.
When I have a difficult decision to make, I imagine myself as a 90-year-old guy looking back on his life. I imagine what I’ll think about myself at that point in time, and it always makes it really easy to go for it. You’re only going to regret that you wimped out.
Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around, but he carried it off so well.
Innovation really is the life blood of our American economy… looking back at the stories of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers, you look at emergence to technology innovation and what it has done for our economy. We need to continue that.
Looking back, letting my hair go natural was an amazing decision because I started getting major ad campaigns. I also signed with agencies in Europe and travelled to many different cities, which I loved. People would stop me in the street and say they loved my hair!
I’m hoping I can fill a gap by helping to advise people on acting mechanics – the kinds of things that, looking back, I would have really benefited from as a teenager.
My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.
It was fortunate in looking back for South Africa and its entire people that Mandela and I found it possible to work together even though big strains developed between us from time to time.
Looking back in hindsight, I really stunted my growth as a fighter by constantly cutting weight all the time.
Now being 41 and looking back on my career… It became natural for me to revisit Inglewood and to revisit the coming-of-age movie, but not wanting it to feel like a period piece completely about nostalgia but wanting it to feel like something that was relevant today and also forward-looking.
I’m not a great one for looking back.
Looking back on those games, I probably hustled out of position as much as I hustled into position since I really never had any real training. I was working on instincts alone.
I guess looking back you’re only as good as you think you are. You can lie to yourself and that’s what you have to do.
Looking back on the production of ‘Nevermind,’ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.
When we moved to Europe when I was a teenager, I really did not want to go. I was happy in my school, with my friends, but looking back on it, it was the best experience I’ve ever had. We traveled every weekend. I experienced incredible new cultures, museums, cities, and it really opened up my eyes.
I didn’t get into drama school after university. Looking back, I think I was really bad.
Looking back at my earlier pictures, I think that the work is very much coming from the same place. I have gone through a period of challenging myself with a complicated idea to currently challenging myself with the idea of simplicity.
I love the idea of my daughter looking back at her childhood and growing up with a dog.
Looking back now at my first World Cup experience, I didn’t know what was going on. I was a newbie and I had no idea what to expect.
No, I tell you what I like is having the play close after a decent run and looking back on it and saying, yes, I did that, and wasn’t it wonderful? Because while you’re doing it, it is really tough. It is so hard.
I started going back and forth, New York, London, New York, London. I wasn’t looking back at all. I was doing tons of jobs. Working, working, working, working.
I’m going to look forward to the future as opposed to looking back at the past.
I had a wonderful childhood, looking back on it.
There was a time when I found looking back to the 90s a little bit… tricky.
You just don’t expect to see your baby fighting for his life. Looking back, you wonder how you coped.
I don’t live in a would of looking back.
I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty, so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs – at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.
Looking back, it was really cool to be a person that helped catapult the women’s division to become what it was.
Looking back at my career, I wish I knew then what I know now… that gender bias is built into the system, and it’s unconscious in many ways. I wish I had the maturity and courage to have pushed back more. I was always trying to be a ‘good girl’ and play by the rules.
Some would argue the opposite: that with better pitches you should be able to express yourself, a bit like Kevin Pietersen does. Looking back, I wish I had been a bit more like that. But I always had a fear of failure, a fear of getting out, so I tried to eliminate risk from my game.
My older brother went into another city for college, and I felt like I wanted to stay in my home town to be close to my parents. Looking back, that was the best decision. My father passed away in 2010 and I got to enjoy those four years with him.
I didn’t have many celebrity crushes, it was mainly Rangers players! I had a thing for Giovanni Van Bronckhorst. Looking back, I really don’t know why! Great player though!
Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.
What I want is a strong NHS delivering the highest standards of care anywhere in the world, and that is true to the founding values of the NHS, and I hope that, looking back on my time as health secretary, people can see that, actually, the foundations for that change were laid in the period that I was health secretary.
There are a lot of people who influenced me, nurtured me, helped me along the way. But I can just recall looking back, the first time I got my baseball glove. Put it on the wrong hand, all those kind of things.
