'Never Gonna Give You Up' in 1987 was a huge international hit followed by several more, and while I appreciated how lucky I was, it catapulted me into a completely new world and simply took over my life.
If you're an artist, and you put out a record - most artists only have one or two hit records - that has 100 million streams, on certain services you only get paid on 75% of those streams. How's an artist going to live like that?
The Grammy snuck up on me. I was on tour. It just hit me. I skipped down the street in Vienna. I kept saying, 'I won. I won.'
The music business is rougher than the movie business. In film you get noticed in a small role, even in a movie that bombs. But in records you better have that hit or else it's 'See you later.'
I get asked a lot what the key is to creating a hit show, and I have a standard answer: Do everything right, and then get lucky 10 ways.
Now, there is no business like show business, and there is no publicity like word of mouth. What is word of mouth, you may ask? Well, word of mouth is gold to Hollywood bigwigs, and it equates to box office bonanzas and hit TV shows.
Playing hockey, there were a lot of guys bigger than me, so I knew I was going to get hit and have to deal with it. Gotta hit back.
Things like 'Lucky Man' were never written to even be a record, let alone a hit record.
If I have half an hour to spare, I just have to hit the shops. And I can get overexcited.
I always thought when I hit 50 years old that'd be it for the travel. I don't have to tell you - you wait at an airport, your flight's delayed, get on a 14-hour flight, get off, get stuck in traffic, you get to the hotel and the room service is closed.
America is a great power possessed of tremendous military might and a wide-ranging economy, but all this is built on an unstable foundation which can be targeted, with special attention to its obvious weak spots. If America is hit in one hundredth of these weak spots, God willing, it will stumble, wither away and relinquish world leadership.
As a youngster, when I started writing and stuff, I did actually write more from other people's perspectives. When I hit 18 and something happened to me that hurt me, I discovered that writing the truth is really therapeutic and amazing.
I got hit by the bug of reading - not via a person, but via the one-room library in our small town. I remember that the children's books were in the right-hand corner near the floor. Often when I went there, I was the only visitor.
In 2011, I released my first album called 'International Villager.' I had no support, and whatever money I had made, I put it all in the album. I shot the music video for 'Brown Rang' with one lakh dollars. I spent so much money, as I just wanted to put it up on YouTube, as I knew that my market was there, and it became a huge hit.
My love songs are very personal and quite weird. They don't really have the big radio hit choruses because basically they're my therapy, stuff I have to get off my chest.
You've got so much confidence if you start making big putts because you know you just need to hit the greens, and you've got yourself a good opportunity for the birdies.
I was invited to L.A. when I was 16 for a weekend-long songwriting session by a writer I had met through my voice teacher in Pittsburgh. My first hit, 'Hide Away,' was one of the songs written during those sessions. It was played for a radio rep who then started a new label; the song got a pretty organic start at radio and then took off.
It was always foolhardy for Republicans and conservatives to stake their objections to Obamacare on the number of sign-ups; Social Security is going bankrupt despite 100% enrollment. The reality is that Obama was always destined to hit his required numbers because, after all, he has the power of government to compel action.
The music industry is really funny, when you have a hit record, everyone knows who are you, everyone wants to do duets with you, then if you have a miss, people suffer from amnesia.
You can't explain the feeling of singing hit songs to an audience - it's like being a genuine sports star at the peak of their powers.
Tell me if this is wrong. Justin Bieber... is 100 percent like watching Vanilla Ice all over again. It's exactly the same. Well, as soon as Bieber has a hit, he'll be like Vanilla Ice.
I'm sick of it when people start to say it: 'Aren't you amazing?' If they start to say it, I hit them.
Listening is more important than talking. Just hit your mark and believe what you say. Just listen to people and react to what they are saying.
There are so many great YouTubers who might have a hit, but they come and they go. Maintaining and being here, just being able to relate to what's going on and putting my spin on the world, I bring not my age, but my my wisdom, and that's something some of the younger ones can't contribute.
I actually had a nickname as a player myself. When I played high school football in Texas, strong safety, they called me Choo Choo because they said I hit like a train.
You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.
It took less time to build 'Instagram' than it did for me to get my work visa. The app was an instant hit, and Facebook agreed to acquire the startup for about $1 billion in April 2012.
All you can do is really the prep work and make sure you're ready to hit each golf shot. Outside of that, you're not sure really what's going to happen. It's a funny game, but I think that's why I love it. You never know, one day to the next; you could go shoot 62, and the next day you're going to shoot 78, and you can't predict it.
The problem with independent films is that they can be hit or miss. I've seen scripts that have blown me away. But there have to be all the right ingredients in place to make them work: the director, cast, publicity, distribution.
You might get run over; you might get hit by lightning. I mean, who knows? Each day, there is a chance you might die. And there's nothing wrong with that. Every living being on Earth is facing that same existential rift.
I believe it's possible to have hit songs and popular music that's recorded by human beings.
In Indiana, which has been hard hit by manufacturing losses, job declines, and shrinking wages, Governor Pence combined tax cuts with spending restraint to spur the Hoosier economy.
I love character-driven, well-written, great storytelling types of films, and I think that 'My Cousin Vinny' just hit the nail on the head with everything. It's one of those movies that, if I'm flipping through the channels, no matter what part it's on, I can watch it. It's just one of my favorites.
I take some pains to learn the material beforehand. I have a bunch of tricks I use to try and hit the ground running. I write everything out. I take the text and I very methodically go through, and that tends to put it into my head a little bit more solidly than if I just glanced at it and hoped for the best.
MTV refers to its audience as 'the demo.' Being 'in the demo' means being in the demographic sweet spot that advertisers want their programming to hit, which is ideally between 18 and 24.
I can't remember if it was in the third grade in school, I was being told that two amoeba happened to hit in a muddy puddle of water two billion years ago, and I was an accident. I was the result. I wasn't real smart, but I said, 'I don't like the sound of that.'
