Quotes About Success

There was a time, after I earned my graduate degree and before I sold my first novel, when it looked like I might have to get an office job.

The high point for me in my career was when Sinatra called me his favourite performer in the Fifties. And I've been sold out ever since.

I've sold a lot of records. Did I keep other artists from eating?

My experience is that books take on a life of their own and create their own energy. I've represented books that have been sold for very little money and gone on to great glory, and I've seen books sold for an enormous amount of money published to very little response.

I never want to record something that I'm not proud of just because I think it might be a big hit. There's no positive about that because if you record a song you hate and it's a big hit, then you're singing a song every night that you hate. And if you record a song that you hate and it isn't a hit, then you sold out for no reason.

I learned some big lessons on my first film, a horror film which was never released in the U.S., even though we sold it to Harvey Weinstein for a lot of money.

I've sold a lot of records. I've sold, like, 150 million records, and I don't think I've had that many good reviews. It's one of those things that when you're really successful, critics hate you just because you're successful.

Our first album sold a million copies. Because we had such a big hit on the first album, it's always like, 'You can't top the first album.'

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

I sold my first story when I was 21 in 1973.

The books I've written the fastest were the best reviewed and sold the best.

In our early days, being recognized on any list of great companies was hard to imagine. There were times when we sold the office furniture to make payroll.

I first sold a cartoon for five dollars. I was in the fifth grade.

I think I became less literary after I sold more!

When people say that moviegoing is dead, I go, 'OK, so the makers of 'Get Out' should've sold that movie to a platform? Then they don't have this insane, crazy success theatrically all over the world.'

'X-Force' #1 sold 5 million copies. By default, the second issue dipped and did 1.3 million copies. But the cover of 'X-Force' #2 is Deadpool. It's not X-Force, It's Deadpool.

'The Rap Year Book' is really great. Shea Serrano wrote it, and it became this huge phenomenon where he sold out everywhere and made the bestseller list just on the strength of his fans on Twitter wanting him to succeed.

Jay and I used to talk about this: we never had a goal of making a lot of money. We had a goal of having a business of our own. And there were many times we could have sold out and had a lot of money. Billions. We just put it in our pocket and go home, OK? But that was never our goal.

I'd sold more records than any other person in history with one album, at that point, in '76. It became a very scary place for me, because I didn't know whose advice to ask and lost my confidence in my own gut feelings about everything.

I believe the UFC was sold based on their performance and the services they've provided, so if a company comes in and buys it, they just bought the blueprints of their success. I believe that WME-IMG bought the UFC because of its structure and success.

When you think about it, we sold about 120 million records, which relates to about £1.2 billion in the U.K. economy. We've seen very little of that.

When I got to the second album, there was an expectation, because we'd sold nearly seven million albums on the first record, that this would do eight or nine.

The first record blew up and sold really well. 'City of Black & White' didn't sell as well, and that's when you wonder, 'Did I peak already?'

I didn't have huge expectations for 'Frampton Comes Alive!' My previous album, 'Frampton,' had sold about 300,000 copies - a decent amount but not mind-blowing. There was talk at the label that maybe the live record could go gold. I was hoping we could do it, but I wasn't sure.