Hubert Selby Jr. Quotes

I've had great success being a total idiot.

It was really fun. It was fun for a lot of reasons. It was fun because nobody thought that we would be successful. It was on a network that wasn't even there at the time.

My style is to take something unexpected and make it into a hit. That's what I do.

One is never ready for success. It consecrates and looses you at the same time.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

I like a cliche if it's sort of turned on its head.

If he ever had a bright idea it would be beginner's luck.

If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan; if this new plan fails to work, replace it in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which does work. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet with failure, because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

Good guys are most likely to finish last, but also most likely to finish first.

If you are losing at a game, change the game.

When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something.

Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate? When I was working on Android, I felt guilty. It wasn’t what we were working on, it was a start-up, and I felt guilty. That was stupid! It was the future.

There are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business.

My businesses are usually built around challenging conventional wisdom, so I tend to gain by taking the other side. It's been very profitable and entertaining for me

We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

It's a miracle when something actually turns out well because there are so many ways for it to go wrong.

When you stop planning and preparing . . . you stop winning.

The average person would have quit at the first failure. That’s why there have been many average men and only one Edison.

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

The reason so few people are successful is no one has yet found a way for someone to sit down and slide uphill.

The seven Ps: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss-Poor Performance

(I) try new things and give myself permission to fail and experiment because only that way can you get really successful.

For every winner, there's a loser. And that person didn't really need to lose. They just didn't understand the game plan.

I don't like that particular word 'shocking.' I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before … I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.

Too many people believe that one big, public success will solve their self-confidence problems forever. That only happens in the movies. In real life, the opposite strategy is what works. Call it the small victo-ries approach. In time you will discover that all failing really does teach you something you needed to know- so you can regroup and stretch again, with ever more...nerve.