Per Petterson Quotes

I think of myself as being a bit of a wimp deep down - a bourgeois wimp - and I'm fighting that. I think all Brits are, maybe.

When I was young I had so many inferiority complexes. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't go to university. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't train. Then it gets tiring. And you do get bored of it.

It's definitely particular to each situation, but whether it is a long history or someone that you're intimidated by or someone that you didn't think you ever had a shot at, at the end of the day, I think we're all living through high school, every day.

There's never been a game plan, and I suppose I've had an uneasy relationship with my ambition. Someone who had been in my year at drama school once said to me that I was terrifyingly ambitious back then. Which was not at all what I felt at the time - I felt paralysed with shyness, though that evaporated.

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast.

Today I still feel like the most illiterate person ever to have roamed the campuses of Wellesley and Harvard, where I later transferred. I remain intimidated by all the books I haven't read, but over the years I've come to realize that being a student is a lifelong adventure.

What if I couldn't handle people's opinions of me? I know that shouldn't dictate a person's degree of peace or happiness in life, but the problem is, I chose a business saturated in judgment.

The working classes in England were always sentimental, and the Irish and Scots and Welsh. The upper-class English are the stiff-upper-lipped ones. And the middle class. They're the ones who are crippled emotionally because they can't move up, and they're desperate not to move down.

When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God.

Even Karaoke needs higher standards than I can reach, so I have gone great lengths to avoid being bullied into it.

I get nervous before everything - dates, filming, award shows. I just don't want to say something stupid. But as soon as I step out on that stage, or as soon as I show up to a date, it all goes away, and I just have a great time with whoever I'm with.

I've never done anything because I thought it would look cool.

I've got to be high class... Which is sad, because I like bars.

I'm really bad at tests of any kind, so I'm bad at auditions. I consider myself educated most of the time, but when I'm under the gun, I just fail.

In school, I didn't speak up often in class. I was never the person to yell out an answer. If I knew it, I might whisper it to my buddy and let him answer. I kept quiet.

There's an insecure part of me that comes out of me, I get nervous. I don't know why, I wish I could overcome it because it gives me an anxiety feeling.

I don't get embarrassed by the same things that other people do. I would say that probably the biggest thing that holds people back is, 'If I do this, I'm going to look like an idiot if it doesn't work out.'

I don't think I've been shy in the past. Young and uncomfortable, maybe. But shy? It has become this annoying term that I've been lumbered with.

There was a combination of shyness and just fear of looking stupid that kept me out of a lot of interesting creative conversations that I could have had at an early age.

I don't know, you know, when I look at it now, I don't know what in the world made me think I could become a director. I really don't.

The hardest pill for me to swallow has been receiving recognition, getting dressed up, going to events. That's the part that has always terrified me. You can see dozens of photos where I have zero hair and makeup and I'm wearing my own jeans and T-shirt, because I was not that interested in that side of it.

I get nervous cooking for our little house party barbecues. I'm very insecure with my cooking. I tend to throw things away that I'm scared of serving, even though they might be great.

I avoided the party scene at the University of Miami. I came in to study musical theater, and I felt so behind. I literally knew nothing.

I just don't want to fail, to be honest.

I hope people don't get bored of me. That fear is always there.