Naomi Alderman Quotes

I hadn't even released my first proper single when I started to feel the strain of attention. But I don't believe that it was the attention that was giving me panic attacks. I think it was everything in my life colliding at the same time. It really did get to a serious point where I couldn't even walk down the street without getting the pain.

I don't deal at all well with the relative amount of stuff I have to face already.

I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase.

It's sad, actually, because my anxiety keeps me from enjoying things as much as I should at this age.

I've started confiding in people, other artists mostly, that I hate making 'South Park,' and I always have. It's super stressful. I'm always miserable.

I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on.

There are plenty of brilliant people who are too stressed out to read challenging literary novels.

For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it's a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me.

I write from the same place I parent, and since becoming a single parent, I have found it difficult, if not impossible, to write anything of length.

Every time I'm shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don't see the light in the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'

We manage the fear, I manage the fear, but it certainly takes its toll, the strain does.

The truth is, I've been going pretty much nuts all year. I constantly have to fight being scattered. I feel like I'm on automatic pilot from fatigue. The hardest thing is trying to be present, living for the moment, for everybody in the family.

I stress a lot, sometimes.

I'm trying to stay normal, that's all. But it's hard.

When you're a bit of an anxious person, and you constantly worry about things, there comes a point where certain jobs are just really bad for you.

We try to live as normal a life as we can, but it can be overwhelming at times.

I worked myself into a frenzy. By 1996, I had a nervous breakdown just from working. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, just getting anxiety attacks and all of that stuff because I was doing too much, too young, all the time.

I went through a lot of changes and a period of depression. I'd reached an age when I had to grow up and start taking life a bit more seriously, which had a huge impact on me. I suffered terrible anxiety, and sometimes, in the middle of a game, my legs would start shaking uncontrollably. It was pretty scary.

Sometimes on sets, I shut down, try to focus.

My performance level has risen - and my anxiety-level has sky-rocketed.

Most of the time I feel stupid, insensitive, mediocre, talentless and vulnerable - like I'm about to cry any second - and wrong. I've found that when that happens, it usually means I'm writing pretty well, pretty deeply, pretty rawly.

I have quite a lot of anxiety dreams.

My writing life has included the struggle to bring up three children. What I do three or four times a year is take myself off to a hotel room to unblock a problem.