Quotes About Perfection

If you strive toward the perfect run, accepting that you will always come up short of that is very intriguing. It makes me think about how in life in general, we always want to strive toward perfection, but sometimes perfection would be the worst thing.

For a ballerina, the worst thing imaginable is big thighs.

A thing well done is worth doing.

To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.

Digital photography is, by definition, unfinished. You don't feel that after every 24 or 36 shots you have to change your film - you know you can go on for ever if you want. You can see the result immediately, and find out if your original idea is worth going on with or not, whether it can be corrected, whether it can be improved.

'Swan Lake' can be a nightmare. To make a 'Swan Lake' that is worth it, every single movement and breath has to be perfect. When you have an idea of 'Swan Lake' that is as high as that, it's almost impossible.

My favorite record of all time is Tom Petty's 'Wildflowers.' I hold it as the standard - in terms of sonics, sequencing, and songs. It shows that making a complete record is important, rather than just making a single.

Tom and I have never claimed to be perfect, whatever that means in a relationship. We're not trying to be anyone's example. We're living our lives and building our family and doing what we love.

Tom Rowlands does not rush a record.

In a perfect world, my tennis game gets better. I have kids and a beautiful wife and live on some hill somewhere that's not in Los Angeles. And the script that Tom Hanks just barely turned down gets in my hands.

It took me all my life to learn how to salt a tomato.

You can never be too rich or too thin.

I learned no detail was too small. It was all about the details.

If someone is too perfect they won't look good. Imperfection is important.

During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

Sometimes a piece of music in the score isn't effective. When a score is too well finished with too many elements, sometimes it's too much.

I get a bit insecure if I feel like there's too much makeup on my face or if I feel like I'm cakey.

There is a danger of changing too much in the search for perfection.

If you polish things too much, it loses the feeling.

There is no such thing as too much rehearsal. When Daniel Day-Lewis told Steven Spielberg he needed a year for 'Lincoln,' I understand that.

Thinking fascinates me, and I probably spend too much time in my mind. My wife says that my perfect world is to be in the Suburban driving, with her next to me and the boys in the back seat and complete silence for two thousand miles.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

It goes without saying that a good Catholic novel should be good craftsmanship, good writing skills. The creative person must always be engaged in the long labor of perfecting the tools of his art. Yet the work itself need not be explicitly evangelical in its themes and plots.

I really don't feel like I'm in any kind of contest. Except, maybe, with myself. Just want to learn and create and grow. Get better all the time with these filmmaking tools. I don't expect perfection from myself. Just progress.