Steve McQueen is the King Of Cool, the guy every other guy wants to be more like, and a damn good actor, racecar driver, and adventurist. In other words—he’s the kind of man you should listen to when he dishes out some wise words. Here are some quotes from Steve McQueen.
1.) “I don’t believe in that phony hero stuff.” Don’t be the chump who is more obsessed with the idea of James Bond than he is about actually helping people and helping the world.
2.) “I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.” The city life isn’t for everybody, and there’s extreme value in living where you love, not living where you’re expected to.
3.) “Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.” Whatever it is that you love, whether it’s racing or something else entirely, do as much of it as you possibly can.
4.) “I learned that life is a long and difficult road, but you have to keep going, or you’ll fall by the wayside.”Quitting is for losers. Keep going, even when things suck.
5.) “I live for myself and I answer to nobody.” Do what you want to do, whenever the hell you want to do it.
6.) “I scrounged around for the next couple of years, trying to get the scam on the human race and just where the hell I fitted in—I discovered there were no openings.” Be who you want to be, not whoever a loved one, political figure, or random group of people think you should be. There’s nothing wrong with no falling under a specific category.
7.) “Film is important; it can be more than reportage or a novel—it creates images people have never seen before, never imagined they’d see, maybe because they needed someone else to imagine them.”Watching a good movie isn’t an exercise in laziness, but an escape into the imagination of another human. It’s not a negative activity.
8.) “I’m about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions.” Don’t be the person who says yes to everything, or the person who is too afraid of confrontation to say whatever it is he wants to say. Challenge isn’t something to be scared of.
9.) “I’m certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.” Never live up to anyones expectations of you, only live up to your own.
10.) “I’m not sure whether I’m an actor who races or a racer who acts.” Job titles don’t mean a thing, doing whatever the hell you love does.
11.) “There’s something about my shaggy dog eyes that makes people think I’m good. I’m not all that good.” People love a little bit of darkness and mystery underneath.
12.) “When I believe in something, I fight like hell for it.” If you want, get it. And don’t give up on it.
13.) “Stardom equals financial success and financial success equals security. I’ve spent too much of my life feeling insecure.” Money matters, whether you like it or not.
14.) “Sometimes you have to say goodbye to the things you know and hello to the things you don’t.”Comfort doesn’t always equal growth.
Written By Jack Archer
