Ismail Merchant Quotes

I really just want to do the best at everything I do. I just want to have all the great people around me that I feel is family, as well as my friends, and I have an amazing girlfriend. I think having love in your life is most important.

If I am constantly working, my relationships fail. So at least now I can have enough time to write a happy record. And be in love and be happy.

Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

I've got a great wife, a great life.

However, there's three reasons for doing things in this particular world. One is love, one is prestige and the other's money. If you get all three together, that's fine.

I've got a nice car. I love my job. I've got a bagel store, and I have breakfast every morning with friends I grew up with. I've been in movies, I've written books - I don't know how that all happened.

I have money, fame, a happy wife, our daughter Nell.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

I think success is finding happiness! Everyone certainly has different goals in life, and things that are important to them, and also things that are not important to them.

I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

When I was 14, I thought, 'How wonderful to be a science fiction writer. I'd like to do that.' I have never lost touch with that ambitious 14-year-old, and I can't help chuckling and thinking, 'You did it, and you did it right.'

I never thought about settling down. I was obsessed with my career - I was blinkered. I finally met a woman who was worthy of me. Then we settled down and had many children.

I had achieved the most important things in my life when I married Joan and had the sons. Given the choice between Joan and the boys, and being a writer, I world give up being a writer without a blink.

If you can do what you do best and be happy, you're further along in life than most people.

It's really corny to say, but if you are happily married and have good kids, that is about 98 per cent of what you should be seeking to achieve.

Having achieved and accomplished love... man... has become himself, his tale is told.

I worked with the world's greatest talents and then went home to the world's greatest woman. It was, and is, a great life.

There aren't a whole lot of things I want out of life. My bucket list is extremely short: Achieve the success in the industry I want, and get married. If I achieve both of those, I can die completely stoked. I don't need anything else.

I'm not trying to conquer Hollywood. I love my day job.

As long as I am given the opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium, I'll be happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family, I'll be happy. As long as I can write in some form, I'll be happy. It is the essential things like that I equate with happiness.

Of course, I want to be number one. But being happy and healthy is the most important thing.

My main thing is family first. This industry can get you so caught up that you're so busy chasing, wanting to be number one and wanting to be the richest that you lose sight of what life really is about.

Meeting my wife changed everything; it really, in the long run, made me a much better artist, a much better songwriter, a much better maker of albums.

I was going to be a comedian but then also winning Oscars and directing movies and creating my own charities and saving the world. The more I've let go of that... I see more access to possibly being able to have something like that.

We don't feel like we're famous. We just feel like we're doing what we love.