Fran Lebowitz Quotes

All of a sudden it felt like people were peering over my shoulder, wondering what I would write next. I was blocked for four years.

I feel a bit scared at times as I feel if I am not convinced about the scene, the audiences won't be either, so I have to give my best.

I normally don't listen to my instincts because I'm so full of doubt.

Sure, I’m dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself.

Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.

For the few little successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self-doubt.

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

Indecision, doubt and fear. The members of this unholy trio are closely related; where one is found, the other two are close at hand.

He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.

Now if I seem to be afraidTo live the life that I have made in songWell it's just that I've been losing so long.

When I first went into freelancing, I think there was a period of about eight months when nothing happened. Everything that I wrote crumbled up, and then it became a self-destructive thing - when you begin to doubt yourself, when doubt turns into - it's sort of like impotence. Once impotent, you're forever impotent. Because you're always worried about being impotent.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

When you hear fear knocking on the door, most of the time when you answer it there’s nothing there. It’s just you holding yourself back.

Maybe it was inertia -or worse, fear- that was keeping me in the same place.

Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.

If I think, everything is lost.

I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.

I've got a lot of weaknesses. One of them is that I often get scared and tense when I'm working - and fear is one of the big threats to any good performance, because it closes you down and makes it harder for you to produce life in front of the camera.

The questions that loom can be intimidating. 'What kind of moves is she gonna make? What is she gonna do?' There is this pressure that you're supposed to keep impressing.

I just don't want to fail, to be honest.

When I'm playing timid and afraid to make a mistake, then I'm not going to play well.

I'm the kind of person who can paralyze myself very easily by over-thinking decisions.

I have played in matches where individuals have frozen and gone into their shells: they don't want the ball, they don't communicate, and they don't do their jobs. Fear turns them to stone.

I doubted myself for a long time.

Your doubts are generated by fear, and fear is a series of distorted thoughts.