Quotes About Determination

I wanted to be a veterinarian until I saw a video of a vet performing surgery on a dog. Then I decided I wanted to be a pianist.

The first video I ever made, announcing 'Crash the Super Bowl,' I did about fifty takes and I wanted to die. It was awful.

There's always apprehension whenever I launch anything, it seems. When I launch a tour, people are always, 'Oooh, is this gonna work?' And when I launch an album: 'Ooh, is this gonna work?' Or a new video. 'Really?' It's always like that - but I've always acted on the impulse that I have nothing to lose.

Sometimes you're not always on or at your best, especially during auditions. So if you go in and you don't nail it, even if they're like, 'We don't need to see you again,' get a friend, get a video camera, and film you doing the stuff again.

It's hard to be so mentally competitive and when you're not competing you try to turn it off but it doesn't work like that. I don't think you can just turn it off, I think you still find ways to be competitive - if it's playing a video game, if it's playing cards.

I'm a big crier. I never cry when something is painful, but I cry if things are frustrating. Like if I'm trying to do something, and I mess up over and over. If I'm playing a video game, and I can't beat a level that I've tried 10 times, I'll cry. When I was a kid, I think I cried for every practice from 2003 to the middle of 2006.

I don't even like to lose when I'm playing video games with my brother, and when I do lose, I get really mad.

I love to compete. No matter what we're doing, it doesn't matter. We could be playing video games or ping pong, and I'm going to get fired up, win, lose or draw.

Since I was a kid, even in school I gave my best, playing with my friends, 100 per cent sweating, fighting. When I was playing any game, even video games, I wanted to win.

I don't even play video games because I don't like losing.

All my life I've been that way - ever since I was a kid. It doesn't matter whether we played video games or even before that when we had board games when you played with your sister and mom and dad - I didn't like losing then and didn't want to do anything but win when we played.

I don't like people getting the best of me or saying that they beat me. Every game I play, every competition I'm in, whether it's in a game, playing cards, video games, whatever it is, I'm trying to win. That's always been my competitive nature.

I'm a competitive guy, and I love the competitive nature of video games.

I know how to make myself hot. I can drop my own music. I can shoot my own videos.

I knew I wanted to be a singer from the age of five. I've been lucky to be so single-minded - some of my friends still don't know what they want to do, and they're finding it hard. There are home videos of me singing and taking centre stage at family parties when I'm about three.

My first acting job - I used to do commercials, and I had done a couple music videos - but my first job job was 'ATL' with T.I. I auditioned for that, like, five times. I didn't have an agent. And then, from there, my life changed.

I started out making skateboard videos. Soon, it dawned on me I just wasn't that great at skateboarding. So I put down the skateboard and just kept going with the camera.

When I was young, I used to watch videos of Ali boxing, with my dad. It set me on the road. I wanted to be like Ali. I wanted to have my own Nicki shuffle and everything.

I was in a play called 'Hood.' I was an extra in 'Passion of the Christ.' I did corporate videos, commercials, little university short films. Just anything that I could be a part of, really.

Oh first, let me tell you how amazed I am by the wealth of talents in the Philippines. I remember watching a lot of home videos about Filipino artists, and they are really very talented. That really motivated me to always do my best and to stay inspired.

I couldn't get gigs because you need to be 18 in most venues. So I started doing videos. I wasn't thinking about getting a record deal, I just wanted to know if people thought I was good.

I did five videos and we had to cover three black eyes. It seemed like the day before a video, I would get a black eye and we had to cover it.

In my life, my parents wanted me to be a musician, I was supposed to go to Vienna to study piano. But this train wanted to go in another direction.

My father left us when I was 10, so I had to make enough money for us to be able to live in a house because my brother went in the service during Vietnam and I was sole support of my mother. And she had no skills, really, except to clean other people's houses. So I had to have a bunch of jobs, you know, as well as music.