Quotes About Perfectionism

Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped.

Annabel, one of my clients who cherished her perfectionism because she felt that it made her a fine writer and an excellent mother, was having a hard time with some of David Burns's teachings against perfectionism in his book, Feeling Good. Dr. Burns, she thought, told her to give up all ideal goals and stick only to realistic and average ones. Then she couldn't be disappointed or depressed.

Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.

I'm a total control freak and love to participate in the design of every single aspect of life.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

The enemy of the "best" is often the "good."

straw or a speck of dust anywhere.

Why do people want to be so skinny? What do they think will happen when they reach their size-zero goal? What happens at zero? Zero means there's nothing left. Why does she want to disappear?

Many things could upset Monet. If a meal was bad or a tree branch fell in the garden, it could send him into a rage.

Nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard and really amazing is to give up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

She had no time for anything humdrum, banal, or mundane - to the extent that the task of cleaning her desk at every night had to be done with a bottle of Perrier water and Chanel No. 5.

Girls are cruellest to themselves.

Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.

I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.

I'm too professional, too much of a perfectionist to take my eye off the ball.

My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people's idea of obsessive.

Professionally, I'm a perfectionist, and to allow people to see that maybe I wasn't always perfect or put together - that my actual personal life was very messy at times... it was scary to let people know that.

I would look at my profile and be like, 'Look at this girl! She has, like, the most perfect life!' and I would feel so guilty for not feeling blessed all the time.

In art or architecture your project is only done when you say it's done. If you want to rip it apart at the eleventh hour and start all over again, you never finish. I was one of those crazy creatures.

It is easy to have a lot of paintings or projects hanging around that are 'almost done.'

I'm not prolific, I go over stuff and it goes for me and sometimes against me. I'm annoyed that I don't do enough stuff off-the-cuff. It's a difficult thing to do something quickly and stand behind it.

I am a control freak. I want everything to be prim and proper.

I'm the sort of person who has to learn something properly before I show anyone.