Terry Brooks Quotes

I aim to be content with what I produce. It's an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

There isn't anything I wanted to do that I haven't. At the same time, there isn't anything I've ever done that I didn't want to do better.

No one puts higher expectations on themselves than I do.

I'm a guy who expects a lot from himself.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

Does any woman ever count the grains of her harvest and say: Good enough? Or does one always think of what more one might have laid in, had the labor been harder, the ambition more vast, the choices more sage?

There have been a few moments when I have known complete satisfaction, but only a few. I have rarely been free from the disturbing realization that my playing might have been better.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

I may appear to be full of myself because I always want better.

There's something about each of my books that I'm really proud of, and there's something about each of my books that I cringe over.

I get angry if I do things wrong, but that's what keeps me going. I want to do my best.

I always say I've given 24 insufficient performances and I'm looking forward to the time in my life when I'll do something that I think is good. There's always stuff you can do better, stuff that maybe you didn't uncover enough. But if you do something that you truly believe is perfect, then that's got to be the last movie you do.

Once I had a better beat, I needed to have an even better one. And somewhere in that climbing, I lost sight of, sort of, my moral and ethical underpinnings.

When I finish a picture I don't show it to anyone if I feel it's not good enough yet. I've learnt to listen to my partners and my friends. For me it's the biggest success if they like it.

I'm a perfectionist, so I always feel there's room for improvement.

I've always been too hard on myself to behave like I've arrived or even to enjoy whatever success I've had. I've always envisioned myself higher than where I was and I still do. With each success I think, 'That's nice but I'm supposed to go there!'

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

All the work that I do, whether or not it ends up being commercially successful or not, feels like the most important thing to me while I'm doing it. I try to take something away from every project, and so they all feel like milestones for one reason or another.

I still worry that I could be better. That's where standards come from, from not wanting to settle. The fear of not being good enough propels you.

I do and re-do things that I used to do in a flash, because I want to be more perfectionist about these things. Maybe it sounds pompous and pretentious, but that's the way I feel.

Honestly speaking, I don't like my films. When I watch them, I see a lot of scope for improvement, so if I were to see any of my films, like 'Dhoom,' I might say... 'It would have been better if...' or 'had it been...' and this is all about evolving.

I will never be satisfied. Life is one constant search for the betterment for me.

I used to feel like I had to be the best at what I did, but I realized I don't have to be the best. It's so freeing. I've never been this happy.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going - I have no post-satisfaction.

I sometimes make pictures which are not up to my standard, but then it can only be said of a mediocrity that all his work is up to his standard.