Quotes About Perfectionism

I was 85 lbs. at my 2000 homecoming dance. But I wanted my collarbones and hip bones to show more. I'd feel my hip bones to make sure they were out. If not, I had more weight to lose. I lost my period until I was 17. I loved that. It meant I wasn't healthy, and I didn't want to be healthy.

Honestly, I am too critical about my work.

I honestly think that's one of the greatest motivators of art - the fear of not making great art.

Working on 'Mad Men,' everything is word for word. And, honestly, I couldn't come up with anything better than that, so it's fine.

Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.

Chores which can be done in an hour, I take about three hours to do it.

As cricketers we fail all the time. You score a hundred every now and again but you get out between nought and 20 far more often. If you get 50, you feel bad because you should have got a hundred. Even if you get a hundred, you feel you should have got 150. So you're always failing.

I'm probably my own harshest critic. If I get a hundred good reviews and one really bad one, it's that one out of a hundred that I remember. I think we actors are hard on ourselves, and I don't know why that is.

It was about as close as you could get to the platonic ideal of a ham, if Plato had spent more time discussing hams and less time mucking about with triangles.

Why in God's name do you even want to be with me? I'm boring, average, uninteresting, uninspiring. I'm not up to par. You spent the last few years telling me this.' 'Only because you stopped trying,' I say. 'You were so perfect, with me. We were so perfect when we started, and then you stopped trying. Why would you do that?

There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child—you grow up knowing you aren't allowed to disappoint, you're not even allowed to die. There isn't a replacement toddling around; you're it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.

There's scenes where I really want to get things right, and all the kids know me as the person who says, 'Sorry.' I think I've gotten a lot better with that, but it's still the thing that I'm still worried about, trying to get the scene perfect.

Sometimes I get worried I'm getting too caught up in the nauseatingly oily smoothness of my own line, when all I'm trying to do is make it as clear as possible.

The hardest thing for a chef is to become comfortable with what you do. Not to be too neurotic and worried with what you are doing and how wrong or right you are.

Every one of us at Pixar is worried that we're going to be the one to make the dud.

I am never worried that I'm not gonna get my work done. I was the kid who got straight As and was a little too intense in school. Like, I am a perfectionist, and I am going to sit at the front of the class with my hand raised.

I've always had this crazy thought that I have to win something; otherwise, my career's a complete failure. It's ridiculous. Will a trophy change me as a person? No. Will it make me a better player? No. So what the hell am I worried about?

I've worried more and more as the years have gone on. The more you're seen to be doing well, the more stress there is. You feel you ought to consider things more, and be more fussy - there's further to fall. All these little worries.

I'm one of those people who lies awake all night and worries about all the horrible things that can go wrong, whether a comma was wrong.

It's always difficult to know if a song needs more than piano, and I worry about my tendency to go in a sparse direction.

I worry a lot about what people think. I worry people think I'm not helping them enough, that they don't like my music, that I'm playing a song too fast or talking too fast. I worry my wife isn't happy with our relationship... I'm afraid somebody's going to take my career away from me. That it's going to go away, or I'm going to get fired.

Sometimes I'll be playing along and find I'm missing the strings. I'll worry about it for days until I notice that the pick has worn down to half its size.

I try not to agonize over my lyrics, though, because that can come across in them. Some lyrics come more easily than others and some you have to spend a lot of time on, but I think you have to watch that you don't take the life out of them by worrying too much.

You either 'get it' or you don't. Worrying about dissent only waters the product down; I'm a hard taskmaster, I take my job seriously, and as a creative, detail is key.