Success Quote by Drew Barrymore

Barrymore’s line lands because it’s a rejection that still smells like confession. She starts with the whole Hollywood altar call - fame, success, fortune, power - stacking the nouns like tabloid headlines, then swats them away. The rhythm matters: it’s not a thoughtful philosophical pivot, it’s a practiced defense against a culture that assumes everyone wants the spotlight simply because they’re standing in it.

The subtext is more interesting than the humility. Coming from an actress whose childhood and private life were famously public, “I’m not after” reads less like virtue and more like boundary-setting. When your identity gets packaged early, you learn to talk about desire in negations. She’s not claiming she doesn’t have those things; she’s trying to unhook her worth from them.

Then she names “a good job” and “good friends,” and the phrasing is almost stubbornly plain. Not “passion,” not “legacy,” not “changing the world.” Job and friends: stability and intimacy. That’s a quiet rebuke to the myth that creative success must be dramatic, consuming, or solitary. It also reframes work as something you can do well without letting it colonize your life.

“That's the good stuff” is the tell - a little shrug of lived experience. The intent isn’t to sound enlightened; it’s to sound sane. In an industry built on amplification, her aspiration is to be legible as a person, not a brand.