Half the stuff I have done which has been successful would never have been made if it had been shown to focus groups.
When I was doing theater, I was very successful at believing that I was great, God's gift to the theater.
I don't think anybody has ever been able to live up to what they promised. I don't know a government that has ever been successful at that because once they get into power, things change and the world is controlled also by business now.
Everyone takes pause at 40. It's the age you have to assess everything in your life. It's the fictitious marker that's always coming up when you're young. The world really does look at you to kind of have it together by 40, and be successful by 40. Whatever success means.
And I tell you that's one of the reasons why I didn't have the friendships with the media, maybe like I could have. But I had to do what I had to do to make myself successful.
Drones can be a highly effective way of dealing with high-priority targets, but they should not become the drug of choice for an administration that is afraid to use successful, legal and safe tactics of the past.
For each of us who appear to have had a successful experiment there are many to whom their own experiments seem barren and negative.
I don't want to be a small-time, independent, successful rapper.
Maybe I've got to admit that what I did here was enough. I can make some more films. Maybe I'll direct a film. Maybe I'll have my musical put on stage. But nothing, really, to be absolutely honest, competes with making a very successful pop band for 10 years of my life.
'The Driver' wasn't commercially successful at the time, but when I was a teenager, I had no knowledge of that.
I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.
I couldn't imagine my life being any more successful than it is now.
It's our nature: Human beings like success but they hate successful people.
I don't want to look back and say, 'Yeah, I was really successful, but I failed at fatherhood because I wasn't there.'
I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I just want to be reasonably successful and live a normal life with all the conveniences to make it so.
Successful weight loss takes programming, not willpower.
The jests of the rich are ever successful.
If you can attract highly educated people from other parts of the country and keep your own best and brightest, chances are the job creators are going to be successful.
My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.
In Europe, we would congratulate anyone who is successful. But congratulations stop if we find that you start to misuse a dominant position.
The most successful of the nations of the world are those who do not fall into the lure of secession but who, through thick and thin, forge unity in diversity.
If you're an actor, even a successful one, you're still waiting for the phone to ring.
The biggest mistake is to assume that another writer's successful strategy will work for you, too. Publishers' marketers - and even freelance publicists who cost mega bucks - tend to do the same basic things for all books.
To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.
I remember thinking, 'If I don't love the woman that I look at in the mirror, I am never going to be successful.' That was the moment I had to start convincing myself to look in the mirror and start saying, 'I love you.'
Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist.
My very first publication was an estimator - this was a statistical procedure - a kind of invention. My father got a patent and started a business; it wasn't successful, but maybe I have some of him in me.
Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.
Ten years from now, I would like to see myself successful as a brand, like Jessica Simpson, with babies running around and a beautiful husband and my own reality show.
I have friends who died being successful bohemians. Today, I see people my age who are gifted but who insisted on staying in this group, and it's beaten them so bad. They have to spend so much time on ego maintenance, they can't get any work done. They'd be very happy to sell out, but there are no buyers, and that hurts.
To me, success in the job is setting a vision, guiding an organization through change - which is exactly what I did at Digitas, and I'm very proud of that - and bringing people together and with you. That, to me, is what it takes to be successful.
Successful men don't date up. They are intimidated by wealthy women unless they are blue bloods. Successful men want to always take care of their women, and that means financially.
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.
Famous pivot stories are often failures but you don't need to fail before you pivot. All a pivot is is a change is strategy without a change in vision. Whenever entrepreneurs see a new way to achieve their vision - a way to be more successful - they have to remain nimble enough to take it.
As much as I'd only like to concentrate on the creative side of acting, the whole business in general is just that - a business - and you have to do your homework if you want to be successful.
At the heart of every successful romance novel lies the evolution of its characters. Through love, heroes and heroines grow not only into a perfect match, but into stronger, better, more admirable people.