At the start of every season, I always asked myself - am I meeting my own standards? Can I still do it? I didn't want to come to the conclusion that I couldn't during a season.
Maybe being number one has got to me, because from there you can only go down.
The price of being the best is having to be the best.
Success does not mean happiness: it means an unusual number of industrious enemies.
With success comes expectation, and I know the expectation on me is going to be pretty high.
I think I overachieved.
When you reach that kind of successful pinnacle, it is the nature of the business and the press and everything that they go about tearing you down.
I wasn't creative or theatrical. I was just doing everything. I was head cheerleader, valedictorian - it was ridiculous!
I'm not very good at sticking at things if I can't be successful at them. I gave up on sport a long time ago.
Those who succeed can't forgive a fellow for being a failure, and those who fail can't forgive him for being a success.
It's great to get an 'F', but you also want to give the sense that there's something outside achievement. I've seen a lot of so-called high-achievers who don't feel they've achieved much.
I don't want to have success to have success.
You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that.
One bulls-eye and you're rich and famous. The rich get more famous and the famous get rich. You're the talk of the town....The sense of so much depending on success is very hard to ignore, perhaps impossible. It leads to disproportionate anxiety and disproportionate relief or disappointment.
In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?
It's been a horrifying academic secret for decades that the children who walk away with the highest formal honors, the valedictorians and National Merit Scholars, have a horrendous performance record in later life.
In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.
Oh god, success is so exhausting.
I just want to make sure girls know they don't have to carry the weight of achieving nearly impossible standards on their shoulders every day.
I have to constantly be doing something; otherwise, I don't feel like I'm reaching the level that I should be.
Naturally it is nice to be widely known for worthwhile achievements, but it forces you to do many things which you don't like to do and these things take up time you want for other things.
Ever since I won the world title I've been getting so much love from my people, from a lot of different people. But I know the hunger remains there because I don't want to let my people down or my kids down.
My parents were amazing and wonderful, but there was a lot of pressure to do my best and in every way possible.
Ironically, it is the talented who have high aspirations, which are possible but exceedingly difficult to realize, who are especially vulnerable to self-dissatisfaction despite notable achievements.
It would have been a helluva lot more fun if I had not hit those sixty-one home runs.
