Orhan Pamuk Quotes

It is a sore point, because you do have advantages if you have access to more than one language. You also have problems, because on bad days you don't trust yourself, either in your first or your second language, and so you feel like a complete halfwit.

I was very nervous about the accent. I was very nervous about being an American.

I think my English is bad.

Anything you can suck at should make you nervous.

I do still get extremely nervous before speeches. My biggest fear is that I'll be standing there in front of hundreds of people and be incapable of talking. I'm afraid that I'll make a complete fool of myself and be unable to go on.

I don't know if I'm truly at home in any language.

I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don't have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English.

I'm afraid that I won't do a good job when I go into an audition.

I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it or even read it. I have an accent, I speak without authority, and so I've always perceived a disjunction between it and me. As a result, I consider my mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language.

I had to struggle with the language. I can understand Hindi now, but I still can't communicate. And things get lost in translation; I feel rejected all the time.

We're not very confident performers, and if we don't get a laugh we get insecure.

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

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

I'm not exactly an example of how to learn English; I just can't get it into my head. I'm learning hardly anything, truth be told.

The fear of failing... not quite the fear of failing, but the uncertainty of whether you are going to perform or not, is there every single game I have played in my life. It will always be there.

When I walk out on to the court and everyone is staring, sometimes I wonder how my legs will carry me out there. That's forgotten as soon as I start playing.

I struggle with perfection.

I always make things worse than they are or create problems that aren't there. And going and doing some simple task becomes a problem. I start imagining problems that aren't there. What people are going to think, who's going to judge me and am I going to be good enough? Am I worthy?

I was definitely not the cocky kid. I was probably on the other end of the spectrum - I was quiet. I remember a time when there was a skills competition, and I think I was five, and I was so nervous to even compete that I chose not to do the skating part.

Insecurities are debilitating a lot of times.

Every time I've been around Beyonce, I get so nervous that I forget how to speak English.

Some people think that confidence is something that some people just have. Even though I may look confident strutting in a two-piece on a stage, there are days when I'm so nervous, or I feel like, 'Oh my gosh, I don't know if I can do this.'

In the past, I've lacked confidence and sometimes that can show physically.

I'm not a good photographer, not a good writer. I'm a pretty regular person whose insecurity is so pervasive that it makes me always feel vulnerable.

After every screen test, my family would ask how it went, but I would just say that I didn't know.