Quotes About Perfectionism

My mother was a high-strung perfectionist. She would check my homework for the slightest imperfection and demand that it be redone if she detected any flaws, which she invariably did. My father, in contrast, was easy going and affable and delighted in helping me with any project.

I can never tell if anything I do is really good. I'm always just slightly chagrined.

I'm a perfectionist, and I like to do each scene slightly differently every time.

Im good at getting information and synthesizing it. Its not that I doubt myself on that. Its, do you have the Ph.D. first-class brain or do you have the really good second-class brain? Because I came from a very academic culture, I always slightly felt I wasnt in the very top group.

I've always been very attentive to detail. It's a characteristic that drives some people crazy. But on the other hand, when people around me are sloppy, that drives me crazy.

Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I'm a sloppy filmmaker.

'Madame Bovary' advanced slowly, as slowly as it would have to have, given an author who held himself accountable to each word, that it be the right word, of which there could be only one.

I write slowly. I can't move on until I've got a paragraph right.

I shoot a scene, edit it, and then, two days later, I doubt whether or not it has turned out right. I reshoot a small part of it, go back to the first edit of it, and do all sorts of things.

I get tetchy with myself when I forget. I also get tetchy when directors ask you for take after take after take after take for no apparent reason. I've heard Maggie Smith gets tetchy for the same reason.

I will not allow a Delia Smith cookbook in my house! It's all so precise with Delia, and it makes cooking seem so inaccessible.

I'm obsessive, I'm a control freak, I get snappy with people.

I second guess everything I do musically, and I often could spend hours on, say, one snare sound.

I'm pretty self-critical about everything I've ever done: stand-up, 'SNL.'

I just know so many people who have six or seven foreign languages and have read everything and have musical training and they are still dorks.

It was idealism that made him so angry. He expected too much out of life.

I love doing what I do, but I don't like seeing the finished product.

I love having 30 shots of every scene.

I have everything in my house organized to an unnecessary T, and I love it! The only downside: I have no excuses for losing my to-do lists.

I love my cameras. I love contact sheets. I love the visceral thing of film and I'm not positive that I can replicate my lighting digitally. My assistants tell me I can, but, just stubborn I guess.

Patrick Bateman: I'm on a diet. Jean: What, you're kidding, right? You look great... so fit... and thin. Patrick Bateman: Well, you can always be thinner... look better. Jean: Then maybe we shouldn't go out to dinner. I wouldn't want you to lose your willpower. Patrick Bateman: That's okay. I'm not very good at controlling it anyway. Share this quote

I once caught him in the act of revising a short story that had just been published. "Why," I asked, "rewrite what's already in print?" He looked at me, vaguely; then said, "Well, obviously it's not finished.

Only thing that I'm guilty of is taking too many jump shots.

I make sure the best of what I do each year is the only material that gets on my albums; I don't want people to think I put out junk.