Quotes About Self-doubt

My deplorable mania for analysis exhausts me. I doubt everything, even my own doubt.

L'action, pour certains hommes, est d'autant plus impraticable que le désir est plus fort. La méfiance d'eux-mêmes les embarrasse, la crainte de déplaire les épouvante; d'ailleurs, les affections profondes ressemblent aux honnêtes femmes; elles ont peur d'être découvertes, et passent dans la vie les yeux baissés.

je ne serai jamais qu'un écrivailleur honni, un vaniteux misérable. // l shall never be anything but a despised scribbler, a poor conceited fool.

I used to come home at night full of inspiration, and sit up with a bottle of Scotch. As I wrote, the words seemed wonderful, just too wonderful to be coming from me. Next morning I always found they were terrible and I could never use anything I wrote.

Even when you have gone as far as you can, and everything hurts, and you are staring at the specter of self-doubt, you can find a bit more strength deep inside you, if you look closely enough.

Elle vivait seule et travaillait plus dur que quiconque, évitait les contagions petites-bourgeoises: le doute de soi, le mépris des études, l'ennui.

Sometimes writers like to imagine that the difficulty of becoming a writer resides in convincing others that that is what you are. But really the problem is in convincing yourself.

I'm afraid of making a mistake. I'm not totally neurotic, but I'm pretty neurotic about it. I'm as close to totally neurotic as you can get without being totally neurotic.

I have written some songs, but I would really call what I've done poetry at the end of the day, because I'll sit with my guitar for hours and hours on end for, like, a week and then I won't touch it for a month. I also just have no confidence. And you know what? I don't have time, because I'd rather be doing other things, like knitting.

I think anytime you put the weight of the world on yourself saying, 'I have to perform,' or, 'I have to get a completion. I have to throw a touchdown,' nine times out of 10, I think you're going to fail.

For many, many years, I thought that I wasn't good enough or that I would never be able to create something that could touch other people the way books have touched me. There's nothing better than having a lifelong dream come true.

I never thought I was doing any great work. I never thought I would last. In the beginning, I was terrible. I never used to speak to people. I used to start crying. I was extra sensitive. I would run away home and feel miserable. I didn't know how to behave then. I was touchy. People interpreted it as arrogance.

I had a lot of self-doubt when I started. And I still do. But I had a lot of the wrong kind of self-doubt when I first started making music and first started to tour. I think I was a little bit deferential.

And when I perform on my own tour, I have to talk myself into going out on that stage every single night.

Some people thought I'd be on the PGA Tour, that I'd win tournaments, play in majors, contend in majors, win majors. I thought they were crazy.

For years, I didn't feel like I belonged in the second week of Grand Slam tournaments. I just wasn't good enough. But when the 2016 U.S. Open rolled around, I knew, for whatever reason, I was going to make a splash.

It's maybe hard to believe, but as a kid I really had a lot of self-doubts. My father was very ill - he was an alcoholic - so there were a lot of things that built up for me. And because I was going to a Catholic school in a small German town, a lot of it was suppressed. I was angry and didn't know how to get it out.

Everyone's films have done well of late. So when your film doesn't do well, you ask yourself, 'Oh, did I make a wrong choice?' And I strongly feel that it's your choices that make a good career. The track record has to be good.

I didn't think Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. It used to worry me. I thought maybe I'm not put together like the other chaps.

Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they won't coalesce ever again.

I did one or two plays at school. Once I played a tree, so I never thought I would be a good actor.

Beware of despairing about yourself: you are commanded to put your trust in God, and not in yourself.

That's life: trust and you're betrayed; don't trust and you betray yourself.

If I could identify one core problem about the world, it's that we've been taught to distrust ourselves.