Daily Inspiration Quote by Peter Coyote

The line lands like a shaggy-dog origin story: credentialed aspiration colliding with the blunt economics of the arts. Peter Coyote stacks identities the way young strivers do when theyre still trying to make a life add up on paper: college graduate, MFA candidate, working actor. Then he punctures the whole ladder with one ugly, vivid phrase: "being abused as a intern". Its not lyrical; its not polished. Thats the point. The sudden shift from respectable institutions (a masters program, a workshop) to exploitation exposes the backstage truth those institutions often launder.

Coyote is speaking from a particular Bay Area moment when theater and counterculture promised liberation but still ran on unpaid labor and hierarchy. The Actor's Workshop evokes a serious, craft-forward scene, yet the intern detail drags it back to the material: someone is always fetching, enduring, swallowing indignities to stay close to the work. Calling it "abused" is a refusal to romanticize paying dues. It reframes apprenticeship as something closer to hazing, suggesting the arts dont just demand devotion; they test how much disrespect youll normalize to keep your spot.

The sentence is also quietly strategic. By admitting the grind, Coyote positions himself as someone who earned his voice the hard way, without pretending the system is noble. The subtext: talent and training are never the whole story; survival is.