A lot of stuff I do out of pure obsessiveness.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

If I am a cup maker, I’m interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.

I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

Jiro Ono serves Edo-style traditional sushi, the same 20 or 30 pieces he’s been making his whole life, and he’s still unsatisfied with the quality and every day wakes up and trains to make the best. And that is as close to a religious experience in food as one is likely to get.

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

Some habits of ineffectiveness are rooted in our social conditioning toward quick-fix, short-term thinking.

I make it a rule never to smoke while I’m sleeping.

People are so caught in a routine, doing the same things over and over.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

So much of what we do every single day is the result of habits that we have formed over time.

Character is expressed through our behavior patterns, or natural responses to things.

Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

You can scream at me, call me for a shoot at midnight, keep me waiting for hours – as long as what ends up on the screen is perfect.

What is common sense isn’t common practice.

In art the best is good enough.

Oh, the difference between nearly right and exactly right.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

I have my flaws too, but I am a professional who doesn’t like to miss or lose.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

I’m one of them guys that tries to make everything the best of the best, so sometimes I’m out of control with it.

Other than obvious errors like forgetting a line, often I can’t see any difference between take one and take 20.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

I’m very picky; I’m never happy with anything. It’s so hard to give the record away and accept that you’re done.

I’m chasing perfection.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed.

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.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

That I be not as those are who spend the day in complaining of headache and the night in drinking the wine which gives the headache!

Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.

If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.

Dancing was always part of my culture growing up in Barbados. When I shot my 1st video I worked really hard with my choreographer to perfect the routines.

I never smoke to excess – that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.