Eleanor Catton Quotes

I don't know if I'm so righteous.

I see myself out of my own eyes, which means I have no idea what's going on the other way around. I just think I try to be a good person - and I fail.

It's difficult to judge yourself.

Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.

Watching myself still makes me uneasy - and when you're younger, you're even more unforgiving.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

The world's most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within us. The worst part is, you can't even tell who is who.

Maybe I am just a jerk.

Well, the real Eric Bogosian is pretty self-conscious of himself.

I don't think I'm successful.

We all look at ourselves in the mirror and think, 'Am I good?'

I'm usually very critical of myself.

I am critical of myself.

I think everyone is always measuring themselves against other people to a certain degree; it happens automatically, and it's hard not to be this way at least some of the time.

All of my close friends are emotional train wrecks. This is what makes our lives interesting - constantly doubting ourselves, worrying, wondering if we've made a mistake. Could we have done better? Are we good people? Are we bad people?

I'm very critical of myself.

I agree with myself on 80 percent of things, but when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, I still have inner debates about the right thing to do.

No one believes that they're a bad person at the end of the day.

I honestly have never really even watched some other things I've done. I don't like doing that to be honest.

I'm sure everyone feels this way, but it's hard to have a proper opinion of yourself or how things are or how you expected them to be or how far removed they are from how you expect them to be. On the one hand, you're extraordinarily grateful and terribly excited, but on the other, I stop and go, "I wonder what the future does hold."

What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.

We judge ourselves by our good intentions, but we're judged by our last word.

I've always avoided those sorts of self-assessments because if you give yourself a 10 out of 10 people think you're a big head, if you give yourself a 6 out of 10 they think you're plagued with self-doubt, so I'm just not going to rate myself.

Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.