Angela Duckworth Quotes

I think I am difficult to satisfy, because when I win something, I'm already thinking about the next step, and that is maybe a problem for me. I'm not enjoying the moment. I'm already on the mission to win the next trophy.

I want to keep pushing myself so I never feel settled. I don't really know if it's going to end up working. I'm stressed out most of the time.

Success can create more madness than happiness.

I stress out a lot. Being a perfectionist doesn't help with that!

I am a person who has many dreams. But as soon as I accomplish one, I move on to the next. That's my fatal, absurd nature.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

It's a bit of a headache being a perfectionist. You're never satisfied.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something's not good enough, and I won't stop until I feel like I've made it. I'm never satisfied.

I'm going to do my best to do both and die of an ulcer at age 30.

Trying to please so many people can definitely cause a lot of stress.

I have dreams where everything will disappear or go away, so I'm always working harder each year.

When you try to do everything perfectly, it gets very tiring.

I put at the top of my paper every day, 'Never comfortable.' It's just how I feel always.

I wish I could just relax sometimes and make some money, but I always feel like I have to prove some kind of big, profound point.

I was nervous from the very beginning, and it got worse as the years went on. I was conscientious and wanted to do more, always, than I was able. I don't think, when I was playing, that I was ever happy - beginning at 4 o'clock any afternoon.

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel pressed and tense almost every day of my life about something or other. And I think it's the one thing, as I look into people's eyes, that I think I share with almost everybody.

You can't go over every beat, every second, and worry about how you can do it better - it'll eat you alive.

I was always incredibly driven and found it impossible to relax. I felt that if I slacked off for a minute to enjoy myself, then so many things would be missed.

I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant.

Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.

A lot of times, in the beginning of my career, I put pressure on myself just because I wanted to perform so well. I just wanted to be perfect.

We're putting a lot of pressure on ourselves for this second album and so we want to make it as great as we possibly can.

Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven.

I was a serious kid to an absurd degree. I was overwhelmed with responsibility. You know, trying to play grown up. I overdid it.