"In my work, there's a tremendous amount of rejection and waves of fertile and fallow times"
About this Quote
Creative work rarely gets framed as agriculture, which is why Marlo Thomas’s line lands: it swaps red-carpet glamour for weather, soil, and seasons. “Tremendous” does a lot of quiet work here. It refuses the tidy narrative that success is a straight climb, and it normalizes rejection as a structural feature of the job, not a personal failing. That matters coming from an actress whose career spans eras when women in entertainment were expected to be effortlessly desired and perpetually “on.” She’s puncturing the myth of continuous momentum.
The phrase “waves” is the subtextual tell. Rejection isn’t a single door slammed; it’s a repeating tide that returns even after wins. By pairing “fertile” with “fallow,” Thomas also signals that silence isn’t always emptiness. Fallow fields rest; they gather nutrients. In industry terms, that can mean developing taste, building relationships, waiting out trends, caring for a life that isn’t audition-shaped. It’s a humane redefinition of productivity in a business that treats gaps in visibility as failure.
Context sharpens the intent: Thomas is a veteran of a highly gatekept, taste-driven marketplace where no amount of talent can fully control outcomes. By describing the cycle rather than the setback, she’s offering a survival language for artists: rejection isn’t an exception to the work, it’s the weather system. The point isn’t to romanticize struggle; it’s to stop being surprised by it, so you can keep planting anyway.
The phrase “waves” is the subtextual tell. Rejection isn’t a single door slammed; it’s a repeating tide that returns even after wins. By pairing “fertile” with “fallow,” Thomas also signals that silence isn’t always emptiness. Fallow fields rest; they gather nutrients. In industry terms, that can mean developing taste, building relationships, waiting out trends, caring for a life that isn’t audition-shaped. It’s a humane redefinition of productivity in a business that treats gaps in visibility as failure.
Context sharpens the intent: Thomas is a veteran of a highly gatekept, taste-driven marketplace where no amount of talent can fully control outcomes. By describing the cycle rather than the setback, she’s offering a survival language for artists: rejection isn’t an exception to the work, it’s the weather system. The point isn’t to romanticize struggle; it’s to stop being surprised by it, so you can keep planting anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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