Quotes About Self-doubt

I've always mid-lined myself where I don't really expect myself to do big things or to win big fights. It's not a lack of confidence, it's just that I think to an extent that you need a bit of an ego if you're going to think that you're going to conquer something.

Whenever you make a movie, when it's done, as a filmmaker, you never sit there and say, 'Boy, I really got that right.' It's, 'Where did I screw up?'

Well, once we finish something, I can't really listen to it because all I hear are problems.

Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I'll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.

It's very Finnish to think you can't make it outside Finland.

When I had my first child, I didn't write for a year, and I felt when I tried to start again I might actually not be able to do it anymore. I really could not do it well, and I felt out of sorts with it.

Music was my first love, but it was difficult for me. It's something that I really love, but I didn't feel that I was so good at it. I can sing well, but I'm not a great singer. When I sing, I don't feel I'm expressing all the emotions.

From the first time someone says, Who do you think you are? we learn how to repress.

Once I actually get in the studio and I start working, I'm fine, but it's just getting there and these hours of torment with myself and self doubt, thinking 'I'm useless' and 'Who am I, conning myself into thinking I can do it again.'

In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.

In a sense, I am achieving what I set out to do - to devote myself to Stephen, to give him the chance of fulfilling his genius. But what have I become in the process? Who am I? What is there left of me? I am beginning to doubt my own identity.

I went through it in high school. It's like, 'Who am I? Am I good enough? Is my background good enough? I know I'm different, but do I have a voice?'

I just don't think I'm that interesting. I don't think what I have to say is that interesting. To hear me go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, who... cares?

As a comedian, I don't know if they're laughing because it's funny or if they're laughing at me because I'm not funny. And I'm thinking, 'Who cares? They're laughing.' If you go on stage, and they're laughing at you full-on for 60 minutes? You know, whatever puts them in the seats.

I suppose I'm led to do so by the fact of what happened to my contemporaries - people whom I've admired, people who I thought were ten times better than me when I was in my twenties and early thirties. I may have been right.

I don't want to be in the spotlight, ever! I don't know why I got in this profession!

All actors are insecure. And I've got my insecurities, which is why I go to the gym all the time.

From the age of 12, I had an understanding that singing was something I loved to do more than anything, and I did say to myself, 'Why not?' But there were definitely some doubts along the way.

My first book is called 'Carry the Three.' It's definitely in a drawer, and it's terrible. I never sent it to anybody. My wife read it, but nobody else.

If you're young and wild, you tend to believe your clippings. One day you're Hemingway. The next day you're nothing.

The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I've ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.

Everyone told me I could sing from about the age of ten. My mum was always telling me. But I was so shy, I didn't believe them. And the more that people told me, the more I went into the background and the less likely I was to sing.

It took me ten years to write a proper story. I floundered about trying to shape something, counting on the 'feeling' I had as I wrote, only to discover upon rereading my work that the feeling had disappeared, and what remained was an empty shell.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.