Quotes About Self-doubt

There was an invisible baton of failure her mother had passed down, and Nora had held it for a long time. Maybe that was why she had given up on so many things. Because she had it written in her DNA that she had to fail.

Nora was only able to think of herself in terms of the things she wasn't.

After all, I looked like them. Maybe this was another human trait. Their ability to turn on themselves, to ostracize their own kind. If that was the case, it added weight to my mission. It made me understand it better.

She couldn't even manage 'cat owner'. Or 'one-hour-a week piano tutor'. Or 'human capable of conversation'.

I make life worse for people. I have nothing to give. I'm sorry.

The biggest enemy of your learning is the gnawing worry that you're not "doing it right." Dissertation work tends to encourage that.

Inside my head, I shit my pants.

If you criticize what you're doing too early you'll never write the first line." [ Paris Review , interview with Jodi Daynard, The Art of Fiction No. 113, Winter II 1989]

Teško je dok se ne odlu?iš, tada sve prepreke izgledaju neprelazne, sve teško?e nesavladive. Ali kad se otkineš od sebe neodlu?nog, kad pobiješ svoju malodušnost, otvore se pred tobom neslu?eni putevi, i svijet više nije sku?en ni pun prijetnji.

When do I stop? When I'm tewnty-five? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty? Or right this minute? Nobody tell s you how long you should keep doing something before you give up forever.

I've always had a fear of being small and ordinary.

I was born like this. I came out of the womb saying, 'I'm worried that something's wrong with me. There's this weird growth between my legs!

The New Coach. Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else?

Joseph wore uncertainty poorly; it seemed to somehow misshape him. I heard in it everything he hid from the world, his own sense of worthlessness, the fear behind his ego.

We are often our own harshest critics

but she seemed to be made more of nerves than muscle and was always clutching at herself mentally, starting at shadows of thoughts that crept up on her.

So between you and me," I tell Justine on the phone that night, "we're either bitchy or stupid." "Oh God," she moans. "Everyone thinks I'm an idiot." "Thanks!

I'm frightened to look at myself in the mirror because maybe nothing's there.

My life isn't as bad as I make out and sometimes I think it's all in my head, but I can't help it.

Just wait until that husband of yours rolls over and goes to sleep without bothering to touch you in six months, Just wait until there's nothing at all between the sheets and you dry up and feel worthless and look in the mirror and begin to believe it's your fault he doesn't want you. Just wait until it dawns on you one day that the real reason he doesn't want you is because he doesn't want himself.

Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself. You imagine him being attracted to them. You're drinking gasoline to stay warm.

A pervasive sense of shame is the ongoing premise that one is fundamentally bad, inadequate, defective, unworthy, or not fully valid as a human being.

I know insecurity is unattractive. I hate this side of me. I don't really hate this side of me. I think other people will hate it so I hate it preemptively to ward off the unbearable feeling of having my shortcomings pointed out by other people. I want to get there before anyone else and stake my claim on hating my jealousy so no one else can.

I can't really act - I'm just trying to make as much money as I can before anyone finds out.