“I never fail. It's just that the people around me succeed more than I.”

“The innovator's motto is this; I succeed or I learn but I never fail.”

“My career always involved being the person in charge of what I was portraying to people. "I never wanted to be an image of something I didn't believe in, an image that somebody else had put together. The idea of that just really scared me, more than the idea of failing.”

“I would rather fail as an artist than succeed as anything else.”

“Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.”

“I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I'm more afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter.”