Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes

Fame is hollow. It amplifies what is there. If there is any self-doubt, or hatred, or lack of ability to connect with people, fame will magnify it.

And yet I understood the alienation of being around others who couldn't really see you or chose not to. I'd felt the self-loathing that came with being a fraud, protraying an image of what you wished you could be but weren't. I'd lived with the fear that people you loved might turn away from you if they ever got to know the true person hidden inside.

Listen, young people, I understand narcissism - clearly. But at least I have the decency to hate myself. And that's what's missing from the young people. They don't have the debilitating self-loathing and the second guessing.

When you're in that scene, you really wonder if this is all you're ever going to be. You know how vile and filthy you are inside.

Not having a father always made you feel that perhaps you weren't quite the same as other people. You felt you weren't complete.

I grew up very insecure. From the time I was little I used to hide under my mother's dress.

I lost my sense of trust, honesty and compassion. I crashed down and became what I consider an emotional mess. I've never been so miserable in my whole life. I just wanted to go to bed and never get up.

When anything bad happens, my insecurities come flooding out.

I can't stand to watch anything that I'm in. I tear it apart. The worst thing you can do is leave me alone and let me watch what I'm in. It's abusive.

I never got picked on, but I never had a lot of friends. When I talked to my parents about it, they said, 'They're just jealous because you're beautiful and talented.' It was probably one of the worst things they could have told me, because I became self-conscious.

I wouldn't want anything to do with me.

I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way.

I was possibly shy. I don't know why some people are shy and some aren't. Some people blush very easily.

I've spent most of my life in prison. I was a prisoner of my fear and my low self-esteem.

I didn't have stage parents and sometimes I've envied people who did because I felt like, I guess, I'm compulsively worried I'm not accomplishing enough.

I can’t help feeling a little bit competitive and a little bit disappointed in myself that I’m already so far behind. After all, Yulikova thinks Barron has a real future with the Bureau. She told me so. I told her that sociopaths are relentlessly charming. I think she figured I was joking.

When a person begins to yell during an argument, it is a tip-off that he is unsure of himself.

Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.

Anger is the common refuge of insignificance. People who feel their character to be slight, hope to give it weight by inflation: but the blown bladder at its fullest distention is still empty.

That is why every brother and sister will react differently according to how they learn to defend themselves and adapt to different circumstances. When our parents are constantly fighting, when there is disharmony, disrespect, and lies, we learn the emotional way of being like them.

When I look at myself as a younger actor, I see what a tight ass I was. I had a pretty big shadow because of my father and the comparisons. I was self-conscious about that. Now I realize there was nothing to be worried about.

I don't hate myself, as a general rule. I'd say the best way to describe it is that I have moments of self-loathing at fairly regular intervals.

Insecurity refers to a profoud sense of self-doubt-a deep feeling of uncertainty about our basic worth and our place in the world. Insecurity is associated with chronic self-consciousness, along with a chronic lack of confidence in ourselves and anxiety about our relationships. The insecure man or woman lives in constant fear of rejection and a deep uncertainty about whether his or her own feelings and desires are legitimate.

Bruce sees in this character - who fought all the way through "Superheavy" when his parents were missing, and now is determined to fight even though his parents are telling him he's worth nothing - the essence of Batman.

Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair.