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I've known ambitious people with no aptitude for the thing they did. Most of whom, rather terrifyingly, tended to succeed.

There's a false notion that success is a zero sum game. To win in our careers we have to give up family. To work hard we have to sacrifice sleep. To accomplish we must take (or borrow or steal) from somewhere else in our lives. It's just not the case.

I had a very strong desire to be successful at something.

Driving race cars was an avenue for me to learn how to build my own car, and that was my ambition all along.

I worked half my life to be an overnight success, and still it took me by surprise.

To be honest, I was never very ambitious. And I still am not.

Nobody tells you when success comes around; in its transient way, you're just working and exhausted all the time. Sometimes I think I'm just sleeping in the back of cars, d'you know what I mean?

I worked hard and made my own way, just as my father had. And just, I'm sure, as he hoped I would. I learned, from observing him, the satisfaction that comes from striving and seeing a dream fulfilled.

All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.