Quotes About Self-doubt

Sometimes I worry my ideas might dry up', he says, an odd tone to his voice. 'I'm not sure who I'd be without them. Sometimes I think I'm really just an empty vessel floating about, downloading ideas and not much else.

You keep saying "I'm fine" to people when you're not fine. You think you should be fine. You keep saying to yourself: "Why aren't I fine?

It was nice to want you so badly it made me breathless yet at the same time hate myself.

I was terrified of being on television - and also I overcompensated, I'm sure, because I know I did this in my personal life too at the time, when I was younger.

You're never as good a writer as you think you are, and you're never as bad. Just keep reading and writing, writing, writing.

But instead of spending our lives running towards our dreams, we are often running away from a fear of failure or a fear of criticism.

She can feel her vanished talent like a phantom limb, the empty ache of its subtraction from the short list of her assets, and she knows with spiteful certainty that it is gone for good.

She has failed. She wishes she didn't mind. Something, she thinks, is wrong with her.

The only time I ever felt qualified to be a parent was before I had kids.

Guess what often brings about anxiety. The voices in your own head, also known as the inner critic or the critical inner voice.

Although at the age of twenty-eight I had become preposterously famous, I was still partially gagged by the indoctrination of aggrieved lower-middle-class humility. In my work I had not dissembled, I was sure of that, but the nagging inheritance of 'Who do you think you are?' is hard to drown out in the presence of those who seem to have an ironclad awareness of who they are.

Only the gospel can do two seemingly contradictory things: destroy pride and increase courage. Destroy self-exaltation and increase confidence. Destroy the pushiness of self-assertion and deliver from the paralysis of self-doubt.

I have barred myself from thinking I'm improving because thus far I have only been fooling myself. Nevertheless, I think I'm improving.

he saw the thin wrists that protruded inches out of his coat sleeves; and he wondered if he appeared as ludicrous to others as he did to himself.

The way adults could talk themselves into and out of feeling okay about something always amazed her.

I AM A COWARD.

I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.

I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.

My bad thoughts and fears stop and I Iook up through the ice, and see a world I never belonged in, that never wanted me.

Do you feel insecure because you keep getting the nagging feeling that you're not that smart? Well, I've got good news for you, my friend. You have no need to be insecure. That nagging feeling is absolutely right on target. You are not that smart. But I have more good news for you. You are also not alone.

it's the fear that their creative endeavors won't live up to some external standard that keeps them from living a more creative life.

The most common reason we hesitate when presented with the opportunity to express ourselves creatively is our fear of other people's negative opinions.

Once we appeal to our most intimate selves, once we begin to labor and to produce, we lay claim to gifts, we become unconscious of our own gaps. No one is in a position to admit that what comes out of his own depths might be worthless. "Self-knowledge"? A contradiction in terms.

But man is a strayed animal, and when he falls victim to doubt, if he should happen to take no further pleasure in attacking others, he turns on himself in order to inflict merciless tortures.