Quotes About Self-doubt

I believe that to be the world's greatest living writer there must be something terribly wrong with you. I don't even want to be the world's greatest dead writer. just being dead would be fair enough.

How are his poems? He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.

I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can't.

I went into the men's room and stared in the mirror at my face in disgust. I looked like I knew something, but it was a lie, I was a fake and there's nothing worse in the world than when a man suddenly realizes and admits to himself that he's a phoney, after spending all his time up to then trying to convince himself that he wasn't. I stared at all the sinks and pipes and bowls and I felt like them, worse than them: I'd rather be them.

It got so bad that Al thought maybe it was him so he went to a shrink and asked and the shrink said, you're one of the sanest men I've ever met. poor Al. that made him feel worse than ever.

I talked to Miriam. She says you paint and write, you're an artist at rare times I'm an artist; at most other times I'm nothing

The truth, however, was that there was very little greatness. It was almost nonexistent, invisible. But you could be sure that the worst writers had the most confidence, the least self-doubt. Anyway, writers were to be avoided, and I tried to avoid them, but it was almost impossible. They hoped for some sort of brotherhood, some kind of togetherness. None of it had anything to do with writing, none of it helped at the typewriter.

You waited in a shrink's office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.

I guess what I meant is that you are better off doing nothing than doing something badly. But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt. [1989 interview in the literary journal "Arete". In response to the question Your poem 'friendly advice to a lot of young men' says that one is better off living in a barrel than he is writing poetry. Would you give this same advice today?]

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." ? Charles Bukowski

Because you're not accepted doesn't necessarily mean you're a genius. Maybe you just write badly.

Possibile che fossi davvero idiota, dopotutto? Ero io che andavo a cercarmele, le rogne? Possibile. Era possibile che fossi davvero subnormale, che per me fosse già una fortuna riuscire a sopravvivere.

he doubted whether any one with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage. But I think he was afterwards well satisfied that my nose had spoken falsely.

DESPITE THE quiet in his apartment, however, and Edie's salutary presence, he couldn't get anywhere on Breakfast of Champions. Many of the pages had been discarded from the manuscript of Slaughterhouse-Five, and he was trying to salvage them. Even so, Vonnegut thought his new novel was so asinine it embarrassed him.150

His Infernal Majesty leans towards me confidingly. "You have imposter syndrome," He says, "but paradoxically, that's often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignorance. It's the opposite of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where the miserably incompetent think they're on top of the job because they don't understand it.

Sometimes I feel my thoughts are not my own, that I am thinking wrong things, stupid things, ridiculous things, for the amusement of an unseen audience.

Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.

The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

If you give me half an hour on the Internet, I can hate myself completely by the end of that 30 minutes.

When I look in the mirror, I never see a handsome chap or the person people think I am.

I'm the one who has to look in the mirror, and after a while it begins to eat at you.

So when I look in the mirror I'm driven by both vanity and fear.

I look in the mirror and say to myself, Can it be you once played Romeo?

I'm never going to wake up and look in the mirror and think, 'Yes, I'll go out and meet people.' Most of the time, you wake up, look in the mirror, and want to give up. And that doesn't change. It isn't awful; it's just the way I feel.