Robert Harris Quotes

Maybe being number one has got to me, because from there you can only go down.

As a novelist, I'm incredibly lucky to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I don't lie awake at four o'clock in the morning, worrying.

My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed people in my fiction, and why I try to earn as much money as I can. It's a defense. I don't enjoy it or do anything with it.

You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it.

I thought that when you have more success that you'd feel more buoyed or feel more confident. But in fact my brain has the gift of switching it around and saying, 'Now people are expecting something. Now you're really going to let people down.'

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

I've worried more and more as the years have gone on. The more you're seen to be doing well, the more stress there is. You feel you ought to consider things more, and be more fussy - there's further to fall. All these little worries.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

The worst of poisons: to mistrust one's power.

The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.

Fear causes people to draw back from situations. It brings on mediocrity, it dulls creativity, it sets one up to be a loser in life.

We're just afraid, period. Our fear is free-floating. We're afraid this isn't the right relationship or we're afraid it is. We're afraid they won't like us or we're afraid they will. We're afraid of failure or we're afraid of success. We're afraid of dying young or we're afraid of growing old. We're more afraid of life than we are of death.

The fearful are the failing.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.

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

A lot of people are scared. It's the way you're raised. The way you've been told your whole life, that you've got to do this and that. Get a job, go to school. So, a lot of people are scared to just do what they really want. They're worried about what people will think and stuff like that. It's just fear.

I'm just one gigantic ball of rancid fear and self-consciousness. I'm entirely fueled by fear, so the fact that I knew it could be a catastrophic disaster made me unable to sleep, and made me work quite hard.

I have a fear of failure.

Okay," I said, "what's your biggest fear?" As always, he took a second to think about the answer. "Clowns," he said. "Clowns." "Yup." I just looked at him. "What?" he said, glancing over at me. "That is not a real answer," I told him. "Says who?" "Says me. I meant a real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence." He thought for a second. "Clowns.

Fear is the dream killer, the silent voice that pushes us to lose our passion in a vain attempt to seek safety.

Welcome to a life of insecurity and paralyzing self-doubt.

Possessing the ideal makes a person nervous: you sense the inevitable decline just ahead.

Indecision is the seedling of fear.

Fear is an inhibitor that has kept more people from fulfilling their destiny than any other one emotion.