I still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a half or something. Somebody had recorded one of my songs.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.

The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts ‚Sign.‘

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

I put together amazing records, whether that’s finding the beat or putting the right hook on there, and picking the right artists on the record. That’s me being an A&R. And I’m making sure that they give me their best.

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.

Nothing will work unless you do.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.

The more centuries that I am able to score, the happier I will be.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Let the path be open to talent.

It needs time. Nobody wants to hear it, but that’s the truth: if you want to have success in the future, you have to be ready to work now.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

When I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.

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

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

When you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up. Once you get to the point where Hollywood sees that you create results, then the demand for you becomes higher.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

As long as somebody finances you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language; then, hopefully, it’s a success.

We work to become, not to acquire.

If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it’s a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.

I’ve always been an underdog. I feel like I beat the odds.

I was a little worried that young people would think the only game was being political and manipulative when really the bigger game is being so good at what you do that nobody can argue with your results.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

Men weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.

See, winners embrace hard work.

Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

I’ve had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, ‚Your music sucks, you don’t know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don’t know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.‘

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.

Of course, I do everything for money.

It is no use saying, ‚We are doing our best.‘ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

We get paid for bringing value to the market place.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‚What’s in it for me?‘

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.

If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, ‚If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.‘

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

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.