The Weeknd quotes: on critics, second chances, his biggest motivation, overcoming nerves, money, and more.
“Be loyal to your own peace of mind.”
“Once you learn to hit, teach yourself to never miss again.”
“Push it to the limit, push it through the pain.”
“My favorite critic is a hater, ’cause they don’t give a sh*t about you and you need that, never ignore or hide from it.”
“Look at all that money. The money is the motive.”
“When the cash overflow, let the cash overflow. I feel useless when I’m never making money.”
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.”
“Staying in a hopeless and miserable situation doesn’t make you loyal, it just makes you miserable.”
“I ain’t scared of the fall. I’ve felt the ground before.”
“Heaven knows that I’ve been told, paid for the life that I chose.”
“I could have ruined my whole life by dropping out of school. A glimpse of where life might be heading as it was bad enough for me to smarten up, to focus. A lot of people don’t get that second chance. But around that age, you usually get one second chance after a slap on the wrist. And you either take the experience and think, ‘This is it, final straw,’ or you don’t. And the next move after that? It’s your entire life. You become who you become because of the next move you make.”
“Luckily, the only thing the world demands of me is music. I don’t have to give them anything else for the rest of my life.”
“I have to do better. This is my life.”
“I couldn’t ever go back home without being something. I probably would never have gone back home if… that was definitely a big motivation. To get back home, and not [show up] empty-handed.”
“I feel like my stars lined up and I lucked out. There was a little strategy behind it, but that strategy doesn’t matter without the music.”
“I went from starin’ at the same four walls for 21 years to seein’ the whole world in just 12 months.”
“It’s always been in me. I just had to be confident enough to let it out.”
“I was working my whole life on those songs. That’s how I phrase it to myself. Even if I wasn’t working on them, I was working on them.”
“I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding. I spend just as much time on how people hear my music as I do the actual music, no matter how long it takes. I’m such a visual artist as well that it always goes hand-in-hand.”
“I’ve been singing my whole life. I’d randomly sing in the hallways at high school, and all my friends would be like, ‘You should sing on Canadian Idol!’ It definitely gassed me!”
“Everything I said I’d do I did; I’m good.”
“Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it. Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.”
“I mean, we’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything. Writing lyrics is like an escape sometimes. You see what’s going on in the real world. And sometimes, you go into your own world, where you create what’s going on.”
“You have to fight the nerves. You have to fight being scared. That’s something I had to do and once I did, I feel like people are more nervous to see me than I am to see them.”
“I’m much more, like, self-regulating than I was four years ago, when I first started getting everything and enjoying life. I don’t focus on it as much as I used to. You know what I mean? Before it’s like, ‘Holy f*ck – this is amazing.'”
“It’s good to have a good team. Especially a team that you’ve grew up with. I feel like everybody kinda loses who they are when they start cutting the people that made them who they are. I had issues in the beginning of the career. When it comes down to performing and being that person, you need to have that strength.”
“The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole, at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.”
“I usually don’t like to ‘spoon-feed’ my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.”
“When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.”
“I just started being fancy, to be honest. Like, I just started learning how to pronounce what I’m wearing.”
“I’m on cloud nine.”
Next, hear Drake’s advice.
