Imtiaz Ali Quotes

If I told people that I knew what I was doing, nobody would believe me, so why even try and fake it?

Have I ever pretended to be something? I think back in college I think I might have told a girl that I was a professional tennis player once. And then, of course, she had never heard of me so I had to dig deeper. 'I'm just sort of on the playing satellites. You know, I'm kind of working my way up. I'm not ranked in the top 100 or anything.'

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

I'd been shy since childhood, constantly full of self-doubt. And as an actor, I'd been so scared of failing that I made my career - and myself - a big joke.

People who act the most arrogant often are the most insecure, and they just can't even begin to accept the possibility that they might not be as good as they think they are.

Spending way too long worrying about what people think about me is a bad habit.

I got through with my ability to mimic others and make people laugh. I swaggered through life, but, in reality, I lived in fear pretty much every day. I acted like a completely normal person, and I suppose I was good at it. But, inside, it was a very different story.

I try to give the appearance that I have it all together and that I know what I'm talking about, but at the end of the day, I think I might be full of crap.

Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do.

I'm not confident at all. You just pretend you are.

If you're the only anything in the room, you're going to feel so self-conscious of your right to be there.

It took me a long time to blossom. Everyone else understood how to socialize and how to look. I didn't get the memo.

I would define boastfulness to be the pretension to good which the boaster does not possess.

All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.

With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.

I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.

I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness ... Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.

We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

This weird thing that musicians have... it's got something to do with approval, and not feeling good enough, and therefore going out and being great somehow makes your life valid.

I've got so many weaknesses.

I've worked with a lot of people who are more famous than myself who are terribly insecure.

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

I've never been super confident about anything. The work is never as good as it could be.

When I was young I had so many inferiority complexes. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't go to university. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't train. Then it gets tiring. And you do get bored of it.

I was very much a late bloomer. That's not to say that girls didn't express interest in me from time to time, but I just, I did not know how to respond to that.