Quotes About Self-doubt

If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked.

Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, 'Uh oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody and they're going to find me out.

The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion.

I have written eleven books, but each time I think, 'uh oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out.

she was brilliant and that only brilliant people worried about not being brilliant any longer.

I'm just not the kind of girl guys think about asking out. Well, maybe they think about it, but they always seem to manage to talk themselves out of it. I don't know if it's because they think I might ram a fist down their throats if they try anything, or if it's just because they are intimidated by my superior intelligence and good looks (ha ha). In the end, they just aren't interested.

He felt a chill on the back of his neck. It was self-doubt, the black beetle that had pursued him all his life, pinching at him, poisoning his every success, whispering in his ear about his flaws and his failures and his unworthiness. He hadn't felt it in months, but the pinprick of its claws was instantly familiar. They informed him with their tiny tattoo that he had almost certainly done something immensely, irrevocably, and unforgivably stupid.

lay there on my pallet, hoping it would improve soon and wondering, in a distant, unreproachful sort of way, if I was any kind of man at all, and decided that I probably wasn't.

Cooking fills me with a dread I can only describe as the sum total of every negative feeling I've ever had about myself. It takes my chronic impatience, divides it by my inherent laziness, and multiplies it to the power of my deepest self-loathing.

He tells me that the best man I will ever find will be attracted to other women. I hear this as another fact I am too old not to know. More proof of how unprepared I am to love anyone.

When I could talk, I said, I don't know what I did wrong. Dena sighed, You care too much.

I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced—the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again.

I'm so bad with people I can't even win an argument with myself.

Talia was always intimidated by her presence, and always felt she looked hoydenish and disheveled, no matter how carefully she'd prepared herself for confrontations.

Stupid people never doubted themselves. Intelligent ones, however, went straight to self-examination whenever anything bad happened. Did I deserve this? Did I bring it on myself? Did I somehow do something that I shouldn't have?

I have a very hard time getting to rage. I always assume that maybe I've done something wrong and then forgotten about it.

At this point, my greatest enemy was myself. Self-doubt can be crushing, and sometimes it is hard to see outside the black bubble.

I wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone in this whole world. I wouldn't hurt them physically or emotionally, how then can people so consistently do it to me? Even my parents treat me like I'm stupid and inferior and ever short. I guess I'll never measure up to anyone's expectations. I surely don't measure up to what I'd like to be.

The feeling that I've done something wrong, that I really don't know what it is, that there's something terribly wrong with my very being, leads to a sense of utter hopelessness. This hopelessness is the deepest cut of the mystified state. It means there is no possibility for me as I am; there is no way I can matter or be worthy of anyone's love as long as I remain myself. I must find a way to be someone else--someone who is lovable. Someone who is not me.

She was struggling, as she had always struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.

Luchaba siempre, y había luchado siempre, no para mostrar a los demás de lo que era capaz, sino para ocultarles de qué no era capaz. Una vida cuyos avances eran enérgicas retiradas y cuyas victorias eran derrotas encubiertas

Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.

Have you too quickly decided that what you have done or what you are doing is all you'll ever do?

I never saw myself as an actor. I neither had the looks nor the backing required to be an actor.