Quotes About Perfectionism

When you're in the editing room, the dangerous thing is that it becomes like telling a joke again and again and again. Eventually, the joke starts to not be funny. So you have to be careful that you're not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Perfectionism is really a challenge for me, and it causes me to be super-critical of myself in so many ways: about body image constantly; about parenting; about being a mother.

I think one of the pitfalls of doing your own music is that sometimes you can never be satisfied with it: you're afraid to say that it's done, and you keep reworking it or re-recording it or re-writing it.

Personally I'm obsessive-compulsive about the placement and cleanliness of my things.

I'm in a complete state of panic before I begin something because I'm sure that it's going to be a complete disaster. I'm going to do a worse job than anybody could ever imagine anybody doing on the planet Earth.

A lot of players get to a certain point they don't want to make mistakes. They just want everyone to see how great they are. That ends up being their downfall. You put a cap on yourself.

My fault now is making my plays too short.

I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please.

Every time I write a book, I think how I could be doing it better to please people - a nicer book with nicer characters - but I just can't.

Basically, I'm a people pleaser who has a knack for disappointing.

If I didn't do something perfectly, I had to do it again... I grew up with a glue gun pointed at my head.

I'll never be satisfied in classical ballet. It'll never be good enough. I'll never be happy with most of my product.

With most specials, even the best comedians will tell you they could have cut 15 or 20 minutes out of it.

I'm OCD beyond comparison.

I'm not great at taking compliments because I always find the thing I could do better.

I enjoyed working with Vishal Bhardwaj. As an artist I still think the song could have been better but everyone liked it the way it was composed, so no complaints.

I've never loved composing, because I feel like other people do it better.

I pick up the details that drive the organization insane. But sweating the details is more important than anything else.

I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase.

I'm a control freak, and anytime I direct something, I try to make it as homemade and handmade as possible. I feel like that's my favorite type of filmmaking, where you can see the seams, and it doesn't feel like a swiftly produced, whole seeky-eyed event.

I thought that when you have more success that you'd feel more buoyed or feel more confident. But in fact my brain has the gift of switching it around and saying, 'Now people are expecting something. Now you're really going to let people down.'

Blaming the bride, while making for colorful feature stories and cruelly riveting television programming, wasn't an adequate explanation for what seemed to be underlying the concept of the Bridezilla: that weddings themselves were out of control, and that a sense of proportion had been lost, not just individually but in the culture at large.

In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.

We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.