“I wanna eliminate my competition. I will be the best. I don't care what it takes.”
Mello Quotes
2 quotes from Death Note, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
The other Wammy's boy, who could not stand to place second and left the building to win from outside it. Treats a succession as a race and a rivalry as a method.
“In the end there is no greater motivation than revenge.”
A line that gets reproduced as if it were a thesis when it is barely an observation, and the series does not even agree with it. Nothing that actually drives this plot is revenge: Light is driven by vanity, Near by ranking, L by curiosity, Misa by gratitude. Mello is the exception rather than the rule he is stating, and the sentence works better as self-description than as the maxim the internet keeps quoting.
Read Mello's story from the start
Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.
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Both boys were raised at Wammy's House to be the next L, and this is the one who could not do it by placing second. Read against Near, who inherits the role by staying still, the sentence is a description of method rather than a boast: Mello leaves the institution, takes up with the mafia, and treats the succession as a race that can be won from outside the building.