Quotes About Performance

That's the hard part about sport: as men we haven't started to be in our prime, but as athletes we are old people. I needed support. I lost trust and did stupid things.

The fifth set is not about tennis, it's about nerves

All greatness in performance rests upon a basis of details. A knowledge of what is general to a subject may suffice for the merely learned man, but a thorough knowledge of details is necessary to form the adept.

Jeff always said that when you focus on the business inputs, then the outputs such as revenue and income will take care of themselves.

If you're not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you're good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground.

During one memorable meeting, a female employee pointedly asked Bezos when Amazon was going to establish a better work-life balance. He didn't take that well. "The reason we are here is to get stuff done, that is the top priority," he answered bluntly. "That is the DNA of Amazon. If you can't excel and put everything into it, this might not be the place for you.

Amazon tried to combat employee delinquency by using a point system to track how workers performed their jobs. Arriving late cost an employee half a point; failing to show up altogether was three points. Even calling in sick cost a point. An employee who collected six such demerits was let go.

Mark's shots fell through the metallic hoop, "but how many of them have that kind of accuracy?

Ten-A-Fly began to perform what some might consider a "dance," though medical experts would probably classify it as a "seizure" or "devastating stroke." Yo

By the third hole, Jack had already dropped three strokes off the lead. His complexion was cartoon Casper. His eyes were as vacant as the Bates Motel, his shoulders slumped like bags of wet peat moss.

The oven was a prop, strictly for show, like a politician's Bible. Something

I can't bear these accounts I read in the Times and elsewhere of these poetry slams, in which various young men and women in various late-spots are declaiming rant and nonsense at each other. The whole thing is judged by an applause meter which is actually not there, but might as well be. This isn't even silly; it is the death of art.

On those occasions when one of my people did not perform as expected, I found that in many cases at least half the fault was my own. I had either not put out clear, clean instructions or I had not trained that person sufficiently, or I had given him a task with little or no possibility of accomplishment.

A leader is paid to do three things: Get the job done and get it done well. Plan ahead—be proactive, not reactive. Exercise good, sound judgment in doing all of the above.

An outfit does well the things the boss checks up on.

Look for and find the really good "horses" in your organization and run them hard. Push them and challenge them with greater levels of responsibility.

Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them. Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.

Dill was a villain's villain: he could get into any character part assigned him, and appear tall if height was part of the devilry required.

He was as good as his worst performance; his worst performance was Gothic.

Los payasos son hombres tristes; es la gente la que se ríe de ellos. —Bien

They said later that Mrs. Merriweather was putting her all into the grand finale, that she had crooned, Po-ork, with a confidence born of pine trees and butterbeans entering on cue. She waited a few seconds, then called, Po-ork? When nothing materialized, she yelled, Pork!

I was to be a ham

A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of-- that a certain type of perfection can only be realised through a limitless accumulation of imperfect.

Then back to the stage, and the acting. The bright lights, the rehearsed lines. The applause, the falling curtain. Leaving who one was for a brief time, then returning. But the self that one returned to was never exactly the same as the self that one had left behind.