self-doubt quotes

To this day, some of my closest friends say, ‚Gaga, you know, everything’s great. You’re a singer; your dreams have come true.‘ But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you’re growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they’re true.

I don’t ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It’s like, ‚Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.‘

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Me not finishing school – in my head, I still have this insecurity when I’m talking to someone educated.

As much as it might look like, to someone else, that I’m successful, I never feel like I’m anywhere. The further I go, I still feel equally further from my eventual goal. Because as I grow, I get more goals. I’m never content.

If I think too hard about a relationship, I’ll talk myself out of it.

I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‚Is this it? Are we still relevant?‘

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

I hear my friends and my mom tell me I’m special, but honestly, I still don’t get it.

I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‚My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.‘ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they’re better than other human beings.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.

Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves.

Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.

I second-guess and overthink and rethink every single thing that I do.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

Sometimes I think my husband is so amazing that I don’t know why he’s with me. I don’t know whether I’m good enough. But if I make him happy, then I’m everything I want to be.

I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.

What good am I? I can’t have kids. I can’t cook. I’ve been divorced three times. Who would want me?

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don’t know who or what, maybe myself.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

I don’t think I’m such an amazing person who needs to be written about.

There was my name up in lights. I said, ‚God, somebody’s made a mistake.‘ But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, ‚Remember, you’re not a star.‘ Yet there it was up in lights.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.