Quotes About Confidence

Pan me, don't give me the part, publish everybody's book but this one and I will still make it!

Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.'

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

I'd go to a bookstore, and I'd flip through flap copy, and I'd think, 'If this gal can get published, I can get published.'

I never thought what I wrote was good enough to be published. I thought of myself as completely detached from that constellation of real writers. It was completely for myself.

There's still, even now, a part of me that can't believe that I got published. That part of me has never gone away.

I was never confident about finishing a book, but friends encouraged me. When I finished my first book, it was accepted by a publisher right away and became an instant bestseller. One male critic called it the most shocking book he ever read.

I had a very high-grade publisher tell me I was incapable of writing a memoir.

I was talking to my publisher, Jamie Ceretta, who's one of my closest confidants and allies when I'm working on new music. I feel like I can always count on his judgement because he'll tell me if he doesn't like something. It's sometimes hard to get people to tell you if they don't like something.

When it comes to my songs I'm confident. Back in 1967, I would go to a publisher's office, and tell them they just had to listen to my music.

I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

Doris Lessing really doesn't care what the critics say. In fact, she orders her publishers not to send her the reviews and gets cross with them if they do because she doesn't want that in her head. She's going where she's going, and that's where she wants to go.

I wanted to be involved with literature. I certainly wasn't going to be able to write for a living, and I didn't have enough confidence in my talent to think that I should be just doing that. Publishing seemed like fun to me - to be involved with writers. And it did turn out to be.

The nice thing about publishing later in life is that you already know who you are. You don't have to hang out with the 'Paris Review' crowd to try to make yourself feel like a legitimate writer.

The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands.

I think, for me, I'm a player that wants the puck, and I'm a better player when I have it.

For me, when I came in, I was always worried about making the other guys happy and giving them the puck and almost giving them a little too much respect. It can take away from your game a little bit.

When 'Next to Normal' won the Pulitzer, that was the moment I felt the show was being defined. There's a certain confidence that comes with being selected.

Curvy girls can pull off any look - it's what we do.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can't do. I know what I will and won't do. I know what I'm capable of and I don't agree to do things that I don't think I can pull off.

Nobody can pull you down more than you.

Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.

When I was younger, I did have some dresses that weren't the best fits, and it can definitely affect you during a match - if you're having to constantly pull the dress down, for example!

One of the things people learn with me is I don't need to pull someone else down to build myself up, and I will live and die by that rule.