"I was a little ahead of him but that didn't matter after awhile"
About this Quote
Kramer, writing from the vantage point of someone who understands how quickly advantage curdles into irrelevance, compresses a whole ethic into two clauses: being first is real, but it is not durable. The phrase "a little ahead" matters; it`s not dominance, it`s marginalia. That small edge is exactly the kind we obsess over in creative life and public life (credits, breakthroughs, who got there before whom) because it feels measurable in a world where most value is not. "After awhile" is doing heavy lifting, a soft, almost bored time-bomb that suggests aging, shifting priorities, changing conditions, maybe even death. It refuses to dramatize; it just outlasts you.
The subtext reads like a corrective to swagger: you can win the early rounds and still lose the plot. It also hints at intimacy, rivalry, brotherhood - the "him" is specific but unnamed, making it expandable: a peer, a partner, an idol, your younger self. The intent isn`t to moralize; it`s to puncture the idea that being ahead is the same as being somewhere.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kramer, Wayne. (2026, January 16). I was a little ahead of him but that didn't matter after awhile. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-a-little-ahead-of-him-but-that-didnt-matter-135339/
Chicago Style
Kramer, Wayne. "I was a little ahead of him but that didn't matter after awhile." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-a-little-ahead-of-him-but-that-didnt-matter-135339/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I was a little ahead of him but that didn't matter after awhile." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-a-little-ahead-of-him-but-that-didnt-matter-135339/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.




