Time & Perspective Quote by Dabney Coleman

There is a particular kind of honesty that only a working actor can afford, and Dabney Coleman lands it with the offhand bluntness of someone who has nothing left to prove. The line isn’t inspirational; it’s anti-myth. It punctures the glossy narrative that success eventually buys ease, that the industry will one day pat you on the head and say you’re safe now.

The repetition does the heavy lifting: “again” admits this is a lesson life keeps re-teaching, not a hard-won epiphany you frame on the wall. The stumble and self-correction - “I have know it… No matter who… how successful…” - reads like memory catching up to ego. He’s reaching for a comforting exception and finding none. That halting cadence is the subtext: even the pros feel the floor move.

Coming from Coleman, whose career often trafficked in authority figures and sharp-edged comedic menace, the quote carries extra bite. He made a brand out of playing people who seem in control; here he’s talking about the opposite state: the constant audition, the constant re-justification of your place. It’s also a quiet critique of Hollywood’s status economy, where “successful” is always provisional, measured in your last job, your last opening weekend, your last public impression.

What works is its refusal to romanticize discomfort. It’s not “stay hungry.” It’s: the hunger is structural.