Gelsey Kirkland Quotes

Mediocrity scares me. It's the fear of not being as good as you want to be. If you give over to that fear, it will sabotage you. As much as I can, I try to use that fear to guide me.

The one thing that scares me the most is failing. It scares me that one day I won't be at this level. But while I'm here and while I'm having success early, I'm trying to do everything to stay on this level.

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.

Perfectionism is not as much the desire for excellence, as it is the fear of failure couched in procrastination .

People always try to be perfect. That's why they don't start anything. Perfection is the lowest standard in the world. Because if you're trying to be perfect, you know you can't be. So what you really have is a standard you can never achieve. You want to be outstanding, not perfect.

It took a lot of work to be perfect.

I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn't do very much else.

Mistakes I've made in the past make me afraid to try new things in the future. I want to be perfect.

I think everyone shares a fear of failure - that you're only as good as your most recent collection. That's definitely a fear, but it's a fear that fuels me, that makes me want to work harder, that makes me take on more challenges.

I always tried to do the best. I knew I couldn't always be the best, but I tried to be.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I want to give 100 percent to everything.

If I were to listen to people all the time when they say, 'Hey, this is a really high challenge, this is a high climb, the bar is pretty steep,' then I wouldn't have gone to the academy. I wouldn't have become an aircraft carrier pilot. I wouldn't have become a Navy SEAL for sure. And I probably wouldn't have applied to Harvard.

Looking for perfection is the only way to motivate yourself.

Carrying out the thing, getting it to the point when one might say: There, now it is good - that point is hard to reach. Often, one sets very high goals for oneself. Perhaps too high.

Broadway! Broad-way! I don't aspire to the middle. I aspire to the tip-tip-top of it all.

I think that somehow I got the notion that I had to be successful, to be the best in the world.

Being an actor, you go through this thing where you want to be the best, and I think, in life in general, you go through this thing where you want to be the best always, constantly.

I'm such a perfectionist. I want to do better and better.

Sometimes I really wish that I could sit back and enjoy it, live in the moment more. But I am terrified, and I want to better myself, not that I want to prove anything to anyone other than myself. I am ambitious, and there are many things I want to do. It doesn't get any easier.

Whatever I do, I want to be the best.

I always felt like I had something to prove, like I had to work twice as hard to make sure I got it. I knew I didn't want to be a good skier. I wanted to be the best.

At the combine and at my workouts, I tried to be the perfect player. I tried to promote my strengths and conceal my weaknesses, and on paper, I kind of succeeded: I was the first pick in the draft. And with that, I inherited this big shiny trophy that I carried around, and it had one word engraved on it - anxiety.

I'm the type of person that always strives to be great.

I've always been like this - insecure - because I'm striving for something that can't be attained. I don't just want to be OK at this: I want to be the best at it, and I've never achieved that in my mind.

My objective is to be among the best.