Jay Mohr Quotes

In Hollywood, I think I get a bad rap for being a perfectionist. It's something that's not always welcomed in Hollywood, because you're always pushing people and you're pushing yourself to be the best that you can be.

The world does not want to see a Pixar film that's not great.

There's an expression in life: "You can only make one first impression." And that first impression has to be spectacular. So, I wait, and let people see it when it's ready to go. It's not a set rule, but I think it's the better way of working. People will agree with you because of your track record, but you want people to like it because it's good, not because you found it.

I think the main thing I would say is, don't settle. Don't settle for something that's not great.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can't attain it in anything.

So I was doing well academically, and I was a well-ranked tennis player and was the apple of my handsome father's eye-and then I would bring home a report card with a B-plus on it, and my parents would look at the report card as if I'd flunked. "Uh, honey?" one of them would ask, looking perplexed. "Now, this isn't a criticism but, if you could get a B-plus in philosophy, how much harder would it have been to get an A-minus?"

Good enough never is. Set your standards so high that even the flaws are considered excellent.

It really is appallingly difficult to do something which is complete in every respect, and I think most people are content with mere approximations. Well, my dear friend, I intend to battle on, scrape off and start again.

When I am doing music, I sometimes become over compulsive to 'always make some new music'. I think I am like this because I sense what others are perceiving me as. If I work extraordinarily hard because of these expectations, I will, but I just cannot produce the good music that I want.

People can live up to high standards, but they can't live up to perfection.

If anyone thinks my show was 'pretty good,' then I've completely failed.

People who are great thinkers, in science or in art, people who are great performers, have to have that kind of capacity. Without that kind of capacity, it's extremely difficult to manage a high level of performance because you're going to get a lot of extraneous material chipping away at the finery of your thinking or the finery of your motor execution.

I'm definitely not a guy that comes in the dressing room saying, "Hey, everybody, what a wonderful life." I'm usually brooding about something I think is wrong. I care so much about getting the music right, and if I think someone's slacking I get very upset about that. I just can't go on stage and say, "Another day, another dollar," which I've heard a few people say: I can't go along with that at all. It's got to be as good as you can do - to my own detriment.

People often imagine that being hard to please confers a certain superiority.

I'm probably never going to be satisfied with anything we do. I think there's always the possibility of doing better. And I'd say we're doing better than we were a year ago, in terms of delivery and quality of service, but nowhere near what we should be doing .

Sometimes, we're so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing. After all, the thinking goes, if we can't be amazing all the time, better to reset the expectation to merely good. Which robs us of the ability to (sometimes) be amazing.

I am a bit of a goody-goody. Not that there aren't times when I think, I was kind of an (ass) today. I work in a world in which people are really catered to; someone will come up to me and say, "Is it OK if this person's makeup is done before yours for the premiere?"

He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands on others.

I'm frequently introduced as a fashion designer, and I quickly say I'm not, and instantly people are incredibly disappointed and think that I'm some sort of charlatan who's been perpetuating this falsehood.

Audiences and critics they don't like seeing what happens in real life. Why do you think comedies make all the money at the box office? People want to go and laugh. I can understand that.

I'm never content with what I do. I live in a sort of permanent dissatisfaction. I think that's the secret to doing things well.

High achievers tend to have major weaknesses. People without major weaknesses tend to be mediocre.

I think auditions are set up for failure because they're not really the set experience. There's no time to develop the character. You're just looking at someone... if someone's really good in an audition, sometimes they're not good in the film. It's something you learn when you're doing short films. It's the same way that some people do well at taking tests and some people don't. But when you're on a long-term filmmaking process it's a completely different feeling.

My mantra is "I don't want to let anybody down." Maybe that's not the right attitude, because you can't please everybody. But I'm giving it everything I've got.