Quotes About Self-criticism

The Hebrew Bible is the supreme example of that rarest of phenomena, a national literature of self-criticism. Other ancient civilisations recorded their victories. The Israelites recorded their failures. It is what the Mosaic and prophetic books are about.

But then self-doubt has always been there for Billy, self-doubt and its cousin the berating voice, these faithful companions have always been on call to help him through the critical junctures of his life.

I don't know if proud is the right word, but I am somebody who does not, on the whole, have the highest regard for my own stuff in that when I look all I get to see are the flaws.

Regardless of what I do, no matter how good it is, it's never, in my mind, 'flawless.'

I wear stuff I regret all the time. It's very rare that I look back at a picture and think it was all good.

I'm terrible at posting regularly; I don't deserve the blog success!

I'm not a fan of my own work. People ask why I do it, but it's because I actually love what I'm doing in the moment. I live for it. It's a release.

Being a perfectionist is really difficult. You're never really happy with what you're doing, no matter how good it is. When you can just release that pressure and be in someone else's work and still have the respect of those creators to bounce off the page and give your ideas that they can take or leave? I really enjoy that.

If I were FX, I wouldn't have hired me.

Honestly, I am too critical about my work.

I've always been very honest about what's good and bad in my writing. That honesty might have made me sound arrogant sometimes, when I was talking about work I thought was good.

I made some probably very cringe-worthy short films that shall hopefully never make the light of day.

A little secret about actors is that we never think we do a great job in auditions. We kind of just go in and do our work and leave sort of hoping for the best. It's an interesting dynamic - acting is such an interesting job. You never quite know how well you do.

Truth is, there's never really been anything so horrible said about me that I haven't either thought of or said to myself.

I think I'm really quite horrible to myself in many ways.

I don't think I'm a good host. I'm not a good host. I'm terrible at hosting. That's my problem.

Criticism is a funny thing, because I think if you want to be something, create something or make a difference in any walk of life you have to be hugely self-critical.

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.

I'm probably my own harshest critic. If I get a hundred good reviews and one really bad one, it's that one out of a hundred that I remember. I think we actors are hard on ourselves, and I don't know why that is.

Whenever I'm here,  I stopped, tried to pull it together. I just always feel like I'm a bad person when I'm here.

You have to keep listening and thinking and being critical and self-critical. Remember General Nivelle, in the First World War, at Verdun? He said he had the solution and then destroyed the French Army until it mutinied.

There's scenes where I really want to get things right, and all the kids know me as the person who says, 'Sorry.' I think I've gotten a lot better with that, but it's still the thing that I'm still worried about, trying to get the scene perfect.

I worry that I can come off smarmy. I wonder if I was listening to myself if I'd want to kick my own ass.

Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being.