Success Narrative Quotes

America has this fascination with glorifying the villain and not talking about the trials and tribulations. We tell the story of the successful villain a lot of times, but we don't tell the story of the people who don't come out so successful, and we don't tell the story of all the bystanders of that choice.

Anybody who is successful and does not use the word “luck” is a liar.

I'm blessed to be able to say that at every juncture in my career, I succeeded.

I think that business book reporting, it's all Jim Collins, it's the story of victory; it's success bias over and over again.

Maybe it's because I came from a small town, but I always did well for myself.

I think that everybody has their own interpretations of what it means to be American. But from my vantage point, being black and successful in the Unites States of America is the epitome of being American.

People think that because I was at Liverpool for such a long time - in a period where the club was very successful - that it was bliss all the way.

The one phrase you can use is that success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan.

I don't have no story. Everybody wants this Hollywood story, but the world don't owe you nothing, man. It's what you owe the world.

Sweet But Psycho' blew up pretty much overnight after my 10-year struggle. It's hilarious when people say it was overnight, because it was not overnight.

You're always in a blessed position if you have a great success story, especially to be in a position to be able to tell it so people can even understand.

No one is born a CEO, but no one tells you that. The magazine stories make it sound like Mark Zuckerberg woke up one day and wanted to redefine how the world communicates [by creating] a billion-dollar company. He didn't.

I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit.

Part of success is having a good story, and as a journalist, I totally understand. But it meant that my many, many years of focus and hard work got kind of prepackaged into a Cinderella story. I'm super grateful that it happened, but it left me feeling like I never got to be a full human in the experience.

Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

If you want to find out if someone's a taker, it's not actually that useful to know what they've accomplished. What you want to want to know is how they explain them.

In Hollywood you just fail upwards.

I am probably the best example of an actor who has built his career on flops.

People who claw their way to the top are not likely to find very much wrong with the system that enabled them to rise.

It's nice to see a movie where people are actually succeeding.

We will be drawing down some troops. If the president wants to try to turn that into the beginning of a success, he actually, I think, has some opportunity.

America doesn't have poor people, they have temporarily embarrassed millionaires: meaning there are people who are poor for now but that's all about to end when 'blank' happens, or when the number comes in, or when the invention takes off.

I'm actually an American success story.

The big lie is that the people who make a lot of money were the only ones that worked hard.

I think people think how I got work came easy. People assume that I was an overnight sensation, because they're just now hearing about me, or that everything happened very quickly.