“To act—that is true wisdom. I can be what I want to be, but I have to want whatever it is. Success consists in being successful, not in having the potential for success.”

“The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one happened to be?”

“We're running into a lot of new problems today because of what we emphasize in this culture. The word 'success' to the average person means earning a lot of money and having a home, two cars, children in college. Success to me is entirely different to what success is to the average person. Success is being a successful human being in terms of pursuing what you believe in. If you believe in making paintings, writing poetry, writing music. If this is what you really want, you're successful to yourself. But to be successful to your culture means to sell yourself short of what you really want.”

“I don’t really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What’s life if you don’t have conversation and joy and anger?”

“If you have a problem and you're also successful, everyone does whatever they can to keep it going. I see that a lot.”

“She said I was afraid of success, which may in fact be true, because I have a feeling that fufilling my potential would really cut into my sittin' around time.”

“It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.”

“I am not successful and I probably never will be. I look around and I see successful people, and I see that they have something I don't—success. Perhaps they were born that way, or perhaps they figured something out that I can never seem to learn. I don't know. That's why I'm not successful.”

“I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.”

“Yes! I know what I have to face. I have to face a coalition. The combination may be successful. A coalition has before this been successful. But coalitions, although successful, have always found this, that their triumph has been brief. This too I know, that England does not love coalitions.”