Paul Auster Quotes

It's just so fragile. The growing sense of 'Oh, God, what am I doing? Am I any good? Will I ever work again?' All those questions of self doubt, they do creep in.

I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.

I don't feel secure at all. I don't know what actor would feel they've made it. I feel like I'm just starting.

I don't really recognise success. I don't see myself as on an upwardly mobile trajectory. I see myself as on the edge of a cliff about to fall off.

There is always a point when one senses one's lack of skill, the doubt.

You aren't sure if you're making the right decision - about anything, ever.

I second-guess myself all the time. I make a decision and then wonder if I made the wrong choice.

I'm probably the most pessimistic actor I know. I'm always sure I'll never work again.

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

I feel the same way I did when I was in school. I'm having the same insecurities.

Uncertainty's not good for anybody.

I feel confidence in myself, but at the same time there's these cracks in the facade and those little things underneath that are unstable.

There's one thing now that I experience every day when I'm making a film. I get up and think to myself, 'Am I going to be able to do it today?' I figure as long as I have that fear, I'll be alright.

To write fiction is to think that you're doing it wrong - that your work habits are inhibiting you; that you've chosen the wrong subject; that you've chosen the right subject, but that someone else has, unbeknownst to you, already written exactly the book you're laboring over.

I am very self-doubting; it has come out of experience.

Insecurities are debilitating a lot of times.

I never think I'm safe. I always live in fear I will lose.

The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.

If! If! If! There were so many ifs in life, never any sense of security, always the dread of losing everything.

I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.

Every time I make a movie I think that it's going to be my last one, I think that no one is going to show up. I always have this sense that they're all going to fail. I am scared to death.

By some fluke, my folks forgot to ask me the question most crucial to ensuring a lifetime of self-doubt: 'What if you fail?

You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.

If you don't have the confidence, it doesn't matter what you do, you're always second-guessing yourself.

Part of the problem is that he lacks confidence. He is nervous.