Quotes About Doubt

In 1975, when my students were kidnapped by rebels, I was accused of hiding instead of trying to save them, and of not giving enough money for their ransom. I wasn't believed.

I don't know what'll ever happen if I'm in a healthy relationship. My writing career will go down the tubes.

I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science.

I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman's family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and most impressive preacher it has ever been my fortune to meet with, but it produced no effect whatever on my mind.

The joy and the pain for me is about tightroping between being a cynic and being a romantic - the tug between barely believing in anything and hoping for everything.

Am I eating chicken or tuna?

I can't tell you how scary it can be for an artist to be in a space where they don't know where the light is at the end of the tunnel.

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.

I saw what religion did to people when I grew up, and I certainly didn't want any part of it. That turned me off it.

When I got signed, I had just turned 16. I felt like I had to continuously have these confrontations with older men who were doubting my ideas because I was a woman, because I was 16.

One preacher turned me on, another turned me off.

My parents were always doubtful about my making a living as an artist. Even when I was up for the Turner Prize, my mum suggested I apply for a curator's job.

From the time I was 16 to really up until turning 21, the roles were really, really few and far between. I had people say that I just wasn't a good singer. They didn't know what to do with me; I would never fit in any markets. I almost quit acting altogether.

I'm definitely guilty of turning tail and running in places in my life. It's the lack of courage, really.

When people feel a certain religion claims to have all the answers, that's what turns them off.

I wasn't so sure about signing up for 'Law & Order.' I liked the show, but another TV series? I'll tell you, though, it's been great, and I had no idea how popular the show was.

I thought, 'As if I'm going to win a TV show, let alone get a record deal.' I'm going to go on TV with all these beautiful pop star-looking people? I'll never win.

Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties.

Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.

Twenty is a hard time. It doesn't matter what profession you're in or how much experience you have, you're always going to be haunted by this feeling of failing. It's terrifying.

I graduated college valedictorian, got an M.A. from Columbia University in Spanish literature at the age of twenty-two, and still couldn't answer the question 'What do you want to do with your life?'

I only know that I fired twice, or perhaps several times, without knowing whether I had hit or missed.

I was very serious about being a priest, twice in my life. Almost joined the Montfort Seminary after I graduated from high school. Almost went back in the seminary during college.

It's kind of my biggest fear: thinking I know somebody I'm going to be, and then I don't. It's probably only happened to me once or twice, but that was enough for me to definitely not do a role unless I 100% can be that person.