Edna O'Brien Quotes

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

Once you have had success there are always people focusing on why it happened. Inevitably, there is a lot of scrutiny when you don't achieve the same again.

Repeating, trying to repeat success - it never gets easier.

Everyone's just looking at you. They're expecting you to win every game, and it's just not possible.

When you are successful, there is the pressure of performing consistently; when you are not, there is the pressure of coming back and doing well.

I had success. I had a number one record. I had a number one album. I have to make this kind of record again or else I'm going to lose it all. That's how you end up making the same song over and over.

Yes I try to do everything I can not to fail hideously.

When I was a teenager, my dad used to put a lot of pressure on me to be successful, and I'd really beat myself up about things like losing martial arts competitions.

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

I thought that when you have more success that you'd feel more buoyed or feel more confident. But in fact my brain has the gift of switching it around and saying, 'Now people are expecting something. Now you're really going to let people down.'

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.

One of the things that happens in the business is that success is a very strange thing in that if you are involved in something very successful the next person wants you to repeat it.

If you're not scoring the frustrations build up.

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.

Demand excellence.

I think I'm probably a little too desperate to be successful.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

You can't have a perfect show every time.

It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.

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

We know that if you have a good game, you are God, and if you misplace five passes in a row, they want to kick you out of Madrid. You have to find the middle ground.

I'm always looking to the next thing. There are always hurdles, whether it's the White House dinner or hosting charity events or that night's show: Until they're over, I worry, then I move right on to the next thing. It's hard for me to enjoy the moment. I'm just thinking about not failing.

As cricketers we fail all the time. You score a hundred every now and again but you get out between nought and 20 far more often. If you get 50, you feel bad because you should have got a hundred. Even if you get a hundred, you feel you should have got 150. So you're always failing.

When I step up to that penalty spot, I know the consequences. They're the same whether I miss the first, second, third - or the 10th - it will be the same.

Pressure comes from being unprepared.