I think the biggest reward is not physical. I rather obtain things spiritually. I mean, it's so cool to be acknowledged by the public, but that's not my goal. That's not why I make music. I would do it anyway, if there was no reward.
Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
A good game gives us meaningful accomplishment - clear achievement that we don't necessarily get from real life. In a game, you've beaten level four, the boss monster is dead, you have a badge, and now you have a super laser sword. Real life isn't like that, right?
Dare to do something worthy of transportation and a prison, if you mean to be anybody.
Fame was never something I was seeking in my artistic journey. It's to be used as a tool for an artist to break open doors and keep creating. That's how I enjoyed fame in '74; it was not just for the emptiness of being famous.
For me, to have had an impact with anything that you've done, whether it's a painting, a photo, a poem, or something that you've created, just that experience is enormous. You don't get that all the time.
To reach your goal authentically is probably, in the end, going to mean much more to you than having reached it in a false way.
I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure it wasn't all-for nothing.
I don't want that title to come to my hands and be like, 'nah, I don't feel like it was deserved or it wasn't earned or whatever' - not saying that any of my accolades weren't, but I want it to be special. I want it to be super special and just super dope, and even if it's not special to everybody else, at least it is to me.
It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have done nothing at all. So people have come into the world for particular tasks, and that is our purpose. If we don't perform it, we will have done nothing.
Children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but what I call their accruing ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment, that is, achievement that has meaning in their culture.
It's not always about huge giant commercial success. It's about art.
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.
A strenuous soul hates cheap success.
That's a part of success: figuring out what success means to you.
