The trouble with glossy magazines is that they tend to be stuffed with articles about handbag designers - the sort of women who, with their perfectly styled lives, immaculate houses, and adoring partners, make you want to become a hermit.
There will always be voices that basically say: Unless it's the perfect solution, we want no solution. That is unrealistic.
Children who are treated as if they are uneducable almost invariably become uneducable.
I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don't say that disrespectfully, but they've been shown a God that you can't measure up to.
You get held to a high standard, almost an unmaintainable standard, in the public eye that you don't even come close to touching.
I look at Liv Tyler and think 'It's not fair', because I can't find a flaw on her. And on top of that she seems nice, so it's really not fair.
I do feel like young people feel pressured to be extraordinary in a new way. Of course everybody is extraordinary in their own special way... but not everybody has been an activist, or volunteered somewhere incredible, or has perfect scores. So it's a lot of pressure to put on young people.
People mistake their limitations for high standards.
I think social media is painting an unattainable picture of perfection.
Because I am Olympic champion, everyone assumes I am this perfect athlete who should never lose. Every time I step in the ring, I am expected to win.
Perfectionism is self destructive simply because there's no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal.
We're living in a time when people are struggling to appear perfect.
Even if somebody in your family is successful, it doesn't change anything. On the contrary, I suppose people expect more of you in certain ways.
Why should every single character be an honor student who goes around helping others and never doing anything wrong? Is that like the rule or something?
Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.
Where in the world have you seen construction people who do everything on time, with good quality and at minimal prices? Just give me one country like that. A country like that doesn't exist in the world, you know. There's not one such country anywhere in the world.
The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.
I sort of felt like the runt of the litter. My brother was just great. If you gave him a cricket bat he'd score 100. If he walked into a party he'd pull the best-looking girl. He was my hero.
I was at UCLA when John Wooden was the basketball coach. The next coach was Gene Bartow, who got fired for winning 90 percent plus of his games. He wasn't John Wooden. It's incredibly difficult to replace someone who has been seen as an icon.
It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.
Mother set impossibly high standards for us, creating tremendous pressures and undermining our ability to accomplish whatever modest aims we may have set for ourselves.
Girls are almost always socialized to be perfect: 'Smile, do well in school, don't take too many risks.'
It's tough for a child to deal with expectations that people have if they have a successful parent. A child often fails to cope with the same and constantly tries to find out possible ways to excel - just to live up to the name.
The truth is many of us have been socialized to think that if we are not the very best, if we are not at the top 1 percent of whatever it is we do, then we are not good enough. To reinforce this already pervasive mental model, society has established a competitive hierarchy for just about everything.
Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there's no room for fault. But I don't expect to turn things around all by myself. I'm not a saint.
