Azar Nafisi Quotes

Either still I find Some imperfection in the chosen theme, Or see of absolute accomplishment Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself, That I recoil and droop, and seek repose In listlessness from vain perplexity, Unprofitably travelling towards the grave.

I'm in competition with myself and I'm losing.

You try to be the best you can and sometimes it ain't damn good enough.

I don't want to sound self-righteous, and I don't want to act like I have it all put together.

I don't like being bad at anything.

All our failures are ultimately failures in love.

If I could only fancy myself clever, it would be better, but to be a failure of Nature and to know it is not a comfortable lot. It is the last lesson one learns, to be contented with one's inferiority -- but it must be learned.

We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?

I have an enormous sense of having failed in life.

I'm unqualified for anything else. I'm barely qualified for this.

I am always drawn to men that are funny. I do not know why. But I am always drawn to people that are struggling with parts of themselves... But it's like in the end, there has to be confidence.

I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect.

I always told, Sandra Bullock was my student when she was younger, I always told her it's important that we hold on to our insecurity, the wisdom of insecurity.

You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting... you.

They say there's no second act in American lives. There's something there worth exploring. Giving up an idea of yourself, examining your failure, and seeing if that failure was the system's or yours. What does it mean to not turn out to be the person you want to be?

At the level at which I work with people, their great talent is paired with great insecurity. Self-doubt is literally the twin of self-confidence. And I have to be there for both.

Being bad at stuff is hard, and we all deal with it every day because we're all bad at stuff.

Charlie Brown is the one person I identify with. C.B. is such a loser. He wasn't even the star of his own Halloween special.

When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

I was always behind in class. There was people in my class who was amazing at art, amazing at maths, amazing at English, but I wasn't clever with anything, even though I tried my hardest.

Every day I fail at something.

I was the kid who never won the races... I wasn't on the list of the high-achieving.

I have a whole phone book of fallibility about myself.

Am I ever gonna grow thick skin? No.

I'm not satisfied with anything I do.