Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, ‚Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?‘ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

You fail only if you stop writing.

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.

My success comes in making fun of whatever you’re doing. That’s my way.

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated.

Riches don’t make a man rich, they only make him busier.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good.

I have a good team. It’s good to have a good team.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

The opportunities of America opened out to me the public schools. They carried me to the professional training of an American university. I began by working with my own hands for my daily bread.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

I first had the idea of writing a popular book about the universe in 1982. My intention was partly to earn money to pay my daughter’s school fees.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

I need more sex, OK? Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

I don’t believe I’ll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn’t go to Harvard.

Without discipline, there’s no life at all.

Talent without working hard is nothing.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.

I see fighters make funny videos about me and stick them on Facebook and get 20 likes. When I make a video, I sell it to Fox and make seven figures. That’s the difference.

History should be written as philosophy.

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

What is once well done is done forever.