Quotes About Success

As a kid, I'd watch MTV and think how great it would be to have my own music videos on those shows. Now I turn on MTV and, along the bottom of the screen, it often reads, 'Coming next... Pixie Lott.' That's so strange that I can't even begin to make sense of it.

If a hit came along, I wouldn't be unhappy about that. But I'm a bit too old for that now-doing videos and all those types of TV shows. I've kind of done all that, in the '70s.

I get a lot of 'Oh, you've been gone.' I wasn't gone. Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't working and collecting checks. I just wasn't singing and doing videos. I do a lot of other things, like I said, like writing scripts and stuff like that. I write for other artists.

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.

My career was exploding at the same time that social media itself was expanding. But when my online videos were taking off, I didn't think, 'Oh, great! I'm going to be able to parlay this into a career!' I just wanted to be a comedian. I just wanted to perform live.

I think being Shaquille O'Neal would be the most amazing thing. There's nothing I would have done differently in his life. Everything he's done I think is pretty spot on, even, like, the bad rap videos, the shoes, the movies, everything.

I started making music videos in my twenties and made my first feature, 'Guncrazy,' at 29. I then spent the greater part of my thirties directing features.

I was doing these music videos online for a couple years, and they'd be doing well to varying degrees. And I released an album, and with the album, I released three new music videos, and one of them was featured on Jezebel.

Every dollar I made from DJing, I put into my videos, promotion - everything.

Apart from some of the videos and haircuts, I don't think I've made any wrong moves, ha ha!

You see the music videos and the bling and the cars, but all of that goes home at the end of the shoot. They make nothing because there's less and less money in the music industry.

Hip hop has been an integral part of my life and my whole career. I started off doing videos with Ice Cube and Dre and Mary J. Blige and TLC.

We pray before everything - videos, onstage, TV shows. I think that has a lot to do with being successful.

It's been a very strange trajectory because I struggled for so many years. I mean, I was doing these videos, I was doing these live shows, I had a lot of fans in New York, the press would write about me, but I couldn't get a paying job, and so my father and I were really like a team.

Back-to-school videos always do really well for me.

I was a rapper who was 13 or 14 years old at one point, and it was a dream. I used to see videos of other rappers around the world, and I used to hope that I could be like that one day.

I started out as musician and recording artist but quite soon started to do my own videos. One thing led to another, and soon I was making videos for a living.

There's different reasons to be proud of different projects, so I'm more proud of certain videos because of what we were able to accomplish within them.

I've just always been making videos. And then I just put them online and, luckily, they all took off.

I literally post swing videos. Like, how is that interesting? But I've created such a following, and they're loyal fans. It's really cool to create a community around something I love, and that they love, too.

I went with the flow. I never knew this could be a career option. But as a 21-year-old desperate for people to watch his content and hear his music, I could go to any extent. Creating four videos a week, only a man sitting empty can do it.

I've been watching Arnold Schwarzenegger. There's a couple of hour-long videos and he's made some amazing speeches. You look at what he's done in his career and it's such an inspiration with where he started. He's got these six rules of success which I listen to quite a lot and it really motivates me.

So many people have been so supportive of my music, my music videos, everything all around.