I asked Kelly about the tradeoffs of focusing on a single thing if you want to be great (which is what I had been getting at before). “Greatness is overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk.”
“The truth is I’m really in pursuit of greatness.
I know people don’t talk like that but I want to be one of the greats.
I'm inspired by the greats.
I want to be up there."
- Timothée Chalamet https://t.co/bZlmQDq2dI
One way to aim high is to try to make something that people will care about in a hundred years. Not because their opinions matter more than your contemporaries', but because something that still seems good in a hundred years is more likely to be genuinely good.