Stephen Gostkowski Quotes

If you get depressed about being the second-best team in the world, then you've got a problem.

There was a time where I was such a perfectionist even if I made the kick, but that's no way to live. I can tell you what, that will drive you crazy. I'm very hard on myself, but if the ball goes in a little bit left of the middle, you're not going to hear me crying about it.

There's gonna be stretches where I don't play as well. People are gonna be talking bad about me and not always on my side and cheering me on.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that's happening to me, and some days I feel everyone's waiting for me to mess up.

Women are hard on themselves.

Sasha gets a raw deal from the press. She makes one mistake in her program and people rip her for not pulling it off when it counts. But she never falls apart. She never just completely folds and misses everything. Usually it's just one mistake.

Even though you strive for perfection, you're never going to play the perfect game.

Ever since I can remember, over-expectation and pressure have been my worst enemies.

In Austria, everything is my fault when we lose. Whatever I do it's not enough.

Every time I go on to the court, people expect me to get a medal. It is tough, and I can't win always, but I still have to go out there and give my best.

I understand when results don't go well, it gets broken down and people blame whoever. You've got to take the good with bad.

You have to make the mistakes and have those failures in order to learn from them and grow and improve... But for me, the best way to combat any of that beating yourself up or overanalysing, the most important part is always to be prepared to the best of your ability.

When I look back at my first few seasons in the NBA, we didn't dominate as a team. There were a lot of nights where we took a beating and got whacked across the head. But we got better along the way, and we started to taste the success. With that came the pressure and expectations to be successful.

It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.

Regret is just perfectionism plus time.

I hate being wrong, and I hate when people give up.

If you're good, you're always looking over your shoulder.

We're taught at such a young age that you can always be better and that you're never perfect and that you're never good enough.

My biggest enemy for the longest time was my head. When I first became successful, it made me anxious because I was overthinking everything, and you hear so many 'fail' stories.

You can't mess up. If you do, everyone wants to kill you.

I feel like people are just waiting for me to fail, so I have to be careful what decisions I make in my career.

I'm always thinking 'Don't mess this up.'

Even when I had a run of successful prime-time shows, I couldn't sit down and enjoy my success. I would beat myself up and scrutinise everything. I'm a natural-born worrier.

I've always swung the same way. The difference is when I swing and miss, people say, 'He's swinging for the fences.' But when I swing and make contact people say, 'That's a nice swing.' But there's no difference, it's the same swing.

Basically, in our society, you can never fix anything enough. The minute you get your head above water about one thing, they let you know that 12 other things about you suck. It's like playing 'Self-Esteem Whack-A-Mole.'